MAY ADVOCATE FREE FROM AFFECTATION

To the critic a magazine for review affords all the delights of lingering in a museum. No single author thrusts his chronology upon you and one is free to ignore the order of the signatures and to follow the lure of titles. The pleasure of finding the defect of this writer cured in the work of another, and of appraising the relative values of each is added to that of finally referring the whole to the absolute, the universal standards.

So, having lingered over the May issue of the Advocate, the though comes that it is genuine, full of good literary endeavor and free from affectation. To find the subject matter bounded by the good taste that begins with simplicity and ends with an observance of the precept of Horace:

"Let each select some theme which he can wield;

And are he tax his shoulders weigh with care

What freight they can and what they cannot boar" is real pleasure.

The treatment in detail, however, leaves much to be desired. None of the prose writers have mastered certain difficulties. If the story is to be a short one, of necessity the laying of the scene is to be briefly done. The writer is lured into generalities and then, only the nicest discretion in a choice of particularization's will prevent an impression of amputation of the parts of an otherwise perfect whole. In order to avoid this amputation, net only must the detail permit the generalization, but an ill-chosen adjective will irritate as well as out.

It is not fair for a critic to hide behind his own generalizations. The morning friendliness of Mr. Hooker's' establishment is deducible from his cordiality, the basking Purple Pig and even an old grandfather clock. But how much better would it be, not to call the grandfather clock--as old and worn as its face appears "inaccurate"! Not content with stopping here the writer further impairs his picture by insisting on deducing friendliness from "the touching picture of a dying fox surrounded by stiff-looking hounds." One may find pathos in the scene and an engendered sympathy for the fox within himself, but the stiffness of the hounds denies any friendliness. One wishes this picture had been introduced in the next paragraph in which we are told "Old prints and framed manuscripts on the walls invited scrutiny."

The second defect is to be found in all the prose in varying degree. There is faulty observation both in imitating nature and in checking up descriptions with the action throughout the story. At the age of sixty-five the alertness of the short, muscular cabinet-makers is questionable. In one place Mr. Hooker's workshop is "small" and yet, later on, Mr. Collision spends half-an-hour in its nooks and corners dragging out furniture. Mr. Hooker needed the space below for his cabinet-making and the same amount of time spent in the attic better fits the picture. Too frequently we find the boars in the waves and the dolphins in the woods.

Hving used Mr. Carey's "Mr. Hooker Sells an antique" to illustrate a general defect in all the prose, he will feel ill-treated at this point. These few defects, however, illuminate the general merit of his story. HE has used a knowledge of the lore of antiques in a pleasing manner to set in relief a variety of humbug pervading the traffic in them. One feels a little as though he has been accustomed to writing for an audience to whom quaintness was prime virtue and formal antiquity the breath of life. His story is by far the best.

It is a delight to be a critic of a "Critique" when one can concur so heartily with Mr. Emerson. The realistic photograph, holding the mirror up to Main Street life, may be useful and instructive, but for those of us who understand that the primary function of literature is to please, a return from a personification of the average and the ordinary as characters to the standards of the old teachers will be welcomed indeed. Men are by their action happy or the reverse, but that action comes of their qualities. It is the inspired, the illustrious in rank and fortune, the strong spirited, even the resolute wicked, who possess the mortal will to engage in the unequal struggle with destiny whether within or without the mind. Of these comes the action which enlists our eager interest and emotions. A touch of vagueness would have been avoided in the Critique had the word "middle-class" been omitted.

Two bits of borderland melodrama are "The Singer" by Oliver LaFarge and difficult to see what justification there is for the latter sending a good man into adversity without a proper tragic flaw in his character. Scraft remains loyal to an ill-chosen wife who possesses no lure whatever for him. Finally his virtue engenders a slow hatred and we are permitted to watch him approach destruction. The tragedy is off the stage; the audience is left without catharsis and in dismay at the outcome. Mr. LaFarge happily prefers to prefers to preserve to us a good man and rescues him from the lure of piracy through the good offices of Sentimental Jack, Captain of the Pirates. A young Frenchman falls among thieves. Another Frenchman, a Yank, a Portuguese and an African Black are introduced with good differentiation. Soon terror is spread in the heart of the hero and the reader is prepared for a critical scene full of danger. We are disappointed at this point to find the hero relieves himself from the embarrassment of a piston in the hands of a pirate being thrust in his ribs by "absently, and almost reminiscently, removing the piston from his hand and backing away, pointing it at the crowd." It is difficult to forgive the writer for this after having laid his scene of blaspheme and gore.

Two sketches, one by E. A. W., and "Along the Way" by A. T.--a picture of the give and take of life--deserve mention. S. R. should be censured for claming "Paradise Lost" as a little for a somewhat ordinary treatment of one of the ironies of life.

The best of the poetry is in the first stanza of Mr. Morrison's unnamed poem and Mr. Behn's "Mid-Day". Mr. Morrison's truly poetic thought is spent in his first stanza, whereas "Mid-Day" is more "consistent. "To Teon Apostate" has rhetorical possibilities with more of a philosophical message than the rest. "I Spent a Day in Dreamland" by A. M. Dobson is a pretty musical rhyme with just a little wastefulness at the end. It is pleasant to read but leaves no splendorous impression. The "Rondeau" and "Vacation Rain" by a single author are pessimistic bits, flung out random-like by a facile brain.

As a whole the issue reflects sincere literary endeavor and affords an hour of pleasant reading.