Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1910 — BITS FOR BOOKWORMS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BITS FOR BOOKWORMS

Rev. Cyrus Townsend Brady's nowel, “The Island of Regeneration,” has been barred from the Toledo Public Library. Professor William James has bees elected an honorary associate of tha Academy of Moral and Political Science at Paris. Sir H. H. Johnston has written a book on “The Negro In the New World,” embodying the results of his study of the color problem In the United States, the West Indies and tropical America. Jack London takes issue with • California preacher as to the meaning of his , novel, “Martin Eden.” “Dr. Brown misunderstands the work as an Indictment of materialism." he said. “I wrote it as an Indictment of individualism.” Lord Morley, In his biography ad Gladstone, deliberately omitted any direct treatment of the religious aspect >f Gladstone’s life. D. C. L&thbury has been engaged for some years on the preparation of a complementary study which will bear the title, “The Relig lous Life of William Ewart Gla* stone.” The English are not alone In their lesire to stamp out the plague of ln> proper books. In Vienna the other day the police swooped Idown upon some thirty thousand volumes in ons shop and carried them off for destruo tlon. The result has been a renewed plea for stricter supervision of ths hooks placed upon public sale. Mark Twain before his return ■ta Bermuda said: “My active work la this life and for this world is done. 1 shall write no more books, attempt ua more lectures or new work. I have half a dozen unfinished books that 1 have hardly touched in three years. Among them is my autobiography, d which. 100,000 words have been writ ten. There are still 500,000 to writ*." A new book by Newman Smyth, D. D., will be published early this Bpring. The title is “Modern Belief in Immortality,” and the book gives a compact but exceedingly suggestive and illuminating-discussion of ths foundations for a belief in immortality and particularly of the new reasons for that belief, drawn from the scientific discovery and research of to-day, which have supplanted the older an guments.

Dr Charles W. Eliot has been enabled to prevent the University Extension Library from duplicating his Harvard classics. “It Is to bo regretted,” says the Publishers’ Weekly, “that any publisher should endeavor to pirate Dr. Elliot's idea, to the benefit of which he Is fully entitled, and It is well that Justice Newburger has found it qiilte possible under the New York statute against the use of a name or picture without the owner’s consent for commercial purposes, to give him effectual protection. The decision certainly makes for firmer ground for equity in the book trade." In the eighteenth century as to-day your poet sometimes gave himself up to rueful reflections on the market value of his wares. In a letter of Cowper’s lately sold at auction, occurs this reference: “I am no very good arithmetician, yet I calculated the other day In my morning walk that my two at the price of thretygulness will cost the purchaser less than ths seventh part of a farthing per-lino. Yet there are lines among them that have cost me the labor of hours.” How Cowper would have opened his eyes at the “oodles of money” made by soma of his successors, such as Tennyson or Kipling. Louis Joseph Vance, author of “Tha Fortune Hunter, was born In Washington, D. C., In IBt9, and has been a writer of short stories and contributor to magazines since 1901. Previous to 1907 he had written several novels, but In that year “The Brass Bowl," his first big success, was brought out. It was followed the next year by “Tha Black Bag,” and since then by “The Bronze Bell” and “The Pool of Flame,” all of which have been unusually successful. Mr. Vance Is at present In Bermuda* where he is engaged In writing a new novel which will probably appear under the title of “No Man’s Land.”

Dr. William Edgar Cell, author of “The Great Wall of China,” la now leading another scientific expedition through China. He writes to his publishers: “One of the principal ota Jects of my return to China is to make a study of the Americans and Europeans living there. I want to ascertain as tar as I can lust what Influence Europeans and Americans have bad on their latter day history, whether those Americans who have settled In China are really representative of our country and whether they have left any Impression upon th« Chinese people* I shall visit every province of China, traveling from end to end of the vast country and searching for new material by which 1 hope to mako Amei iafcs understand more folly what a remarkable and Interesting country the Celestial Kingdom really la.”