Oxford University Press: Lessing's Minna Von Barnhelm. Edited by Josef Wiehr, Ph.D. Die Juden Ruche: Annette Freüm von Droste Hülshoff. Edited by Ernest O. Eckelmann. G. P. Putnam's Sons: The VIIIth Volume of Beaumont and Fletcher. Edited by A. R. Waller, M.A. EDITOR'S TABLE. Johnson's advice to a woman who brought a play to him to look over was that she should look it over. When she protested that she had no time, as she had so many irons in the fire, he gave her the only further advice possible-to put the play along with the irons. Did Johnson find in her manuscript pieces of bad grammar and horrible spellings? Certainly not; if he had, the lady would have at least been called a blockhead. And if she had been a man, and had brought such grammar and spelling (to say nothing of good or bad English) to him for revisal, what would he have said? All this is pertinent to a case more than a hundred years later-our heelers. But they do worse. The pieces too often do not show enough traces of the hand of man; they appear as if done in haste on a galloping, stitch-dropping machine. So much for these minims. But there is a finer matter to correct; a darkling vice especially of prose. (We do not wish to seem to be abridging the native liberty of genius.) The so-called word-pictures cannot be starred unless there is imagination in them; and the artist must describe his scene to show forth the greatness of his subject and the power of the conception in his brain, because he cannot help it, in his excitement. And such descriptions we call inspired. Even the order of a group of nouns like rice, sugar, rubber, cotton, iron, can be changed about with interesting psychological results. It occurs to us in this hour of uncastigated styles, that a fatalistic "heeler" would be comforting, one to say, "I am not to make it, I perceive." A. R. W. FragmentThe Round Table once more settled upon its feet, as the Austere High discussed Bad Taste with the Good Grey Poet. "Now, sir-" he thundered. Nevertheless the Wilding Bee hummed softly among mental mesembryanthemums and irised thoughts. He cared nothing. Without demur, Trissotin twisted his scrawn through the chair-back, and the Prelate giggled through an amber mouthpiece. The Good Grey Poet transferred a thought to the Austere High. They received not a whit of sympathy; for the others slumbered wearily. . С. А. The following extracts are from an article in the New York Evening Post of October 3: NEW HAVEN HOUSE SOON A MEMORY. INTERESTING OLD HOSTELRY TO BE REPLACED BY HOTEL TAFT-ITS HISTORY BOUND UP WITH YALE-A PLACE OF IMMUTABLE CUSTOMS, ENFORCED BY GENIAL NEGRO BELLBOYS. The old New Haven House is soon to be no more. Difficult though it may be to believe, this ancient hostelry, which has been as much a part of New Haven as the elms themselves, is to disappear, and the very name to go out of existence. The elms lost their beauty and their utility, and the ruthless hand of man cut them down. So with the New Haven House. It did not respond to the modern needs of its guests, and the Taft Hotel is to take its place. The thousands of Yale graduates, of Harvard and Princeton and Columbia visitors, will recall what the football rush on a great day means: that crowded lobby, where hundreds press into a space meant to accommodate only dozens; the crush in front of the dining-room door, open barely wide enough to admit one at a time; the push out and in as those fed and those unfed cross in violent proximity; the swelter of the dining room itself, with the suffocating heat; the clatter of the waiters; the good-natured resignation of the patrons, who are smilingly indifferent to half fare at double price, and the striking incongruity between the appearance of the guests and their surroundings. They are all "nice people," and show it, and they are in pandemonium. The name of the new hotel has been endlessly discussed. True to tradition, old New Haveners regret that the present name should go out of existence. There has always been a New Haven House in New Haven. At least twelve or fourteen generations of "old grads" cannot remember the time when there was not a New Haven House. In the old days, the Fence was there, and never a guest did, or could, arrive at the New Haven House or get into it, by the chief entrance on Chapel Street, or the women's entrance on College Street, without being the cynosure of hundreds of Yale eyes. Watching the New Haven House was the chief diversion of the Fence loungers, although tales of Yale as they are published in different forms, at different times, fail to give it the share of attention due it. While the Fence rang with a hundred voices, it watched with a thousand eyes. Mr. Moseley was what is called a true "hotel man." He had the tact to find what people wanted and the knack to give it to them. He was a tireless worker. He bought his own provisions-and good ones-and he went into the kitchen and instructed his cooks-instructed them so well, indeed, that from that day to this they have not been able to change their ways. Cooking hot cakes for breakfast, thirty or forty years running, turns out a different product from the first result. Sending vegetables to the table in little bird bathtubs does not seem so appetizing now as it must have been fifty years ago. The registers of the hotel would be good reading, for the list of renowned guests who have patronized the New Haven House in youth and in old age would be enormous. Presidents of the United States, justices of the Supreme Court, ambassadors, foreign statesmen, great soldiers, learned men of all nations and all titles and all degrees, great actors and great singers, all in the course of half a century have passed into the small, dark, draughty lobby where about eight uncomfortable and unmatched chairs give unceasing warning to their occupants that it is time to go about their business. O, those darkey waiters! And O, those darkey bellboys! The place swarms with them; they are like crickets-always hopping but never there. Some of these men have been in the New Haven House for years and years. And they do not change a particle, either in looks or manners. It is impossible to teach them new ways. Three courses constitute, to them, a company dinner, and it is three courses that the patron gets, no matter how many he orders. Fish is brought in with the soup, salad with the roast, fruit and coffee and cheese with the dessert, and this has been the appointed order for fifty years. Breakfast is served in the same immutable course and it is in vain that in this case the patron tries to make a short cut to his bacon. He orders coffee and bacon and rolls. He sits out the fruit course and the cereal course and the steaks and chops course to bacon "on the side." Train or no train, so much time has for fifty years been appointed to this order for breakfast; it should take just so long for a man to reach his bacon from the time the head waiter convoys them to his table. The Taft Hotel is bound to serve its patrons restaurant carte. The long tables will go, too. The old order passes. fashion, à la Part of it is such conduct of a still existing hotel by the darkies. They flock about the doorways, good-natured, careless, polite. The same lack of formality obtains from over the counter to the patrons. If everybody else is busy, the clever little telephone girl, whose skirts are still above her boot-tops, assigns rooms and gives out keys. What difference does it make who does it, as long as it is done? This spirit saves the whole thing and makes it go, indeed. In the intervals of work, they all play in the lobby, black and white, young and old, girls and men. But, on the whole, if one is vexed at the utter absence of form and formality, one feels a decided ease of living at the old house. Good beds there are, and plenty of clean linen. A strict watch is kept for fire, and in former years, when celebrations were so exuberant that they approached frenzy as the night wore on, this excessive care was necessary. It was rather startling, however, to step out of one's room and come suddenly upon two noiseless, blue-coated men, who were whispering together and pointing up and down. If any blaze ever started in the New Haven House, the fact has been carefully concealed. The house is patrolled and policed by the night "boy," but perhaps it is by good luck only that there has never been a great robbery there. During promenade time, of late years, wonderful jewelry, furs, and gowns, and much cash have been brought into the hotel and left lying about absolutely unguarded day and night, while the careless owners have gone out to teas, and dances, and balls. Almost any key fits any door. Many an absent-minded guest has turned a lock and wandered into a room he thought his own, to be brought to his senses by discovering strange baggage under his eyes. And why somebody has not made one clean sweep, nobody knows. The chance, however, has gone now forever. The new hotel will have patent locks. You may see FOWNES GLOVES on the man who doesn't you're SURE to see them on the man who does know. T is an old and friendly custom to "advise" the Freshmen from the mouths of the athletic coaches, from the editorials of the papers, from the rostrum in Dwight Hall, and from between the brown covers of this magazine. The advice this year is the remark of the White Queen to Alice: "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider how far you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!" So much to the Freshmen trembling in their wobbly doubledeckers. Let them not fear upperclassmen too long, for the latter have no lurking desire to slay them at home or abroad on the streets. There ought to be an official announcement that upperclassmen are not Grand Inquisitors, and that Freshmen are not "as the dust beneath the chariot wheel." in one, two, and three years, these same "little white lambs" will be filling the positions that upperclassmen now hold, since they are human beings after all. For, Many Freshmen are too sensitive about coming in contact with the upper classes, and do nothing in the extra-curriculum |