Frontier_ by Mody C. Boatright (Macmillan, New York,
1949) goes into the human and social significances of humor.
Of boastings, anecdotal exaggerations, hide-and-hair metaphors,
stump and pulpit parables, tenderfoot baitings, and
the like there is plenty, but thought plays upon them and
arranges them into patterns of social history.

Mary Austin (1868-1934) is an interpreter of nature,
which for her includes naturally placed human beings as
much as naturally placed antelopes and cacti. She wrote _The
American Rhythm_ on the theory that authentic poetry expresses
the rhythms of that patch of earth to which the poet
is rooted. Rhythm is experience passed into the subconscious
and is "distinct from our intellectual perception of it."
Before they can make true poetry, English-speaking Americans
will be in accord with "the run of wind in tall grass" as
were the Pueblo Indians when Europeans discovered them.
But Mary Austin's primary importance is not as a theorist.
Her spiritual depth is greater than her intellectual. She is a
translator of nature through concrete observations. She interprets
through character sketches, folk tales, novels. "Anybody
can write facts about a country," she said. She infuses
fact with understanding and imagination. In _Lost Borders_,
_The Land of Little Rain_, _The Land of Journey's Ending_, and
_The Flock_ the land itself often seems to speak, but often she
gets in its way. She sees "with an eye made quiet by the power
of harmony." _Earth Horizons_, a stubborn book, is Mary
Austin's inner autobiography. _The Beloved House_, by T. M.
Pearce (Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1940), is an understanding
biography.