ubiquitous than in 1919, but the tales wherein he figures appear to
the Committee to be the last drops in the bucket. Two exceptions
occur: "Young China," by Charles Caldwell Dobie, and "Widows and
Orphans," by Ellen La Motte. The former knows San Francisco Chinatown,
the latter is acquainted with the Oriental at home. One of the
Committee regards "The Daughter of the Bernsteins" as the best story
of Jewish character. Another sees in it a certain crudeness. Its
companions in the year were the tales of Bruno Lessing, Montague
Glass, and--in particular--a story by Leon Kelley entitled "Speeches
Ain't Business" (_Pictorial Review_, July).

But this note on the list is a digression. With regard to the
stories reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world
influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past,
the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival
of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is
a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a
distinct portrait of the swash-buckler hero of those times.

The young Americans in "The Camel's Back" support a critical thesis
made for their author that he is evolving an idiom. It is the idiom
of young America. If you are over thirty, read one of this prodigy's
ten-thousand word narratives and discover for the first time that
you are separated by a hopeless chasm from the infant world.

"Professor Todd's Used Car" and "Alma Mater" are two of the numerous
stories published in 1920 which take up the cudgels for the
undertrodden college professor. Incidentally, it is interesting to
read from a letter of Mr. Lewis: "The brevity--and the twist in the
plot at the end--were consciously patterned on O. Henry's methods."