LITERARY NOTES

"How rare it is to find a good listener.. ;■•■ . . Watcb. their faces, examine their eyes, and.you will meet, with no sign of attention, no effort to grasp what, is being said to them. Most people we meet have preoccupied eyes. It is above all. in children that we meet with that pure, direct look which goes out from them to the person or the thing they are endeavouring to understand. ... " — Sir Charles Walston in "Truth: An Essay in Moral Reconstruction." (Cambridge University Press.)

M. Jean Aj albert, the distinguished French novelist recently elected to a vacant seat in the Goncourt Academy, was appointed some tune ago to the direction of the State tapestry factory at Beauvaia. Writing in the Avenir, ho leveals the miserable wages which are paid to the,craftsmen at work in the factory. The commencing salary of a skilled cratsman (artiste-tapisseur) is barely one pound a' week, and he takea years to reach the masurium of twice that amount.

Mrs. Clement Scott tells, in "Old Days in Bohemian London," how the two composers Sir Alexander Mackenzie and- Sir Arthur Sullivan once found a house to which they had been invited, but of which they had forgotten the number. " How can I recollect numbers?" asked Sir Alexander. " All I know is the door scraper is E-flat." Away they went kicking the door-scrapers along the row. "Here we are, this is E-flat!" exclaimed Sullivan. And it was the house right enough.

For Thucydides, writes Professor Gilbert Murray in "Aristophanes and the War Party '" (George Allen and Unwin), the thing so praised in the great Funeral Speech was indeed already dead: "The dream of a regenerated life for mankind has vanished out of the future, and he rebuilds it in his memory of-the past. Tho. Peloponnesian War had ended wrong; and whatever the end might have been, it had already wrecked Hellas." . ■

Those who were delighted with tho partners in " Potash and Perlmutter" will welcome the new volume of a series, " Worrying Won't Win " (Harper Bros., New York). Grand opera in war-time is thus humorously referred to by Abe to Mawrus:—"For instance, Caruso conies out with a couple hundred assorted tenors and bassos, and so far as any human tieing could tell which dou't understand Italian, Mawruss; he begs them that they shouldn't go out on strike right in the middle of tho busy season, in particular when times is so hard and everything, and from tho way lie puts his hand 101 his heart it looks liko ho is also' telling' thorn tha!/ ho is speaking to them aa n friend, y'lmderestarid, and to consider

their wives and children, understand me.

. . . However, when the lights are turned on, and "you look it up in English translation, what do you find? The entire thing was a false alarm, Mawruss. It seems that for twenty minutes Caruso has been singing over and over" again, ' Come, my friends, let us go,' and the whole time them people wa3 acting like they wanted to tear him to pieces, they have been saying: 'Yes,.yes, let us go' a thousand times over, and that's all there was to it." This poem for a long time past was always labelled "Anonymous" until a few weeks ago, when it was discovered to be the work of the late Henry Cust: Not unto us, 0 Lord, Not unto us the rapture oi tho day, The pdace of night, o£ love's divine surprise. High heart, high speech, high deeds, 'mid honouring eyes, For at Thy word . All these are taken away. Not unto us, 0 Lord; . . To us thou givest the scorn, the scourge, tho scar, " The ache of life, the loneliness of death, The insufferable sufficiency of breath; And with Thy sword Thou piercest very far. Not unto us, 0 Lord; .Nay, Lord, but unto her.bo all things given— My ligfet, and life,*and earth,, and sky be blasted, ' •" But let >not all that wealth of loss be wasted; Let Hell afford The pavement of her Heaven. The French Academy has awarded its Grand Prix de Litterature (10,000 francs) for the year to MM. Jerome and Jean Tharaud for their work as a whole, and ■ the Prix du,Roman (5000 francs) to M. Pierre Benoit for his novel "L'Atlahtide." The Gobert Prize (10,000 francs) tor the most distinguished piece of historical writing has been divided between M. Maurice Marion for his study, " Les Finances de France depuis 1715 " (9000 francs), and M. Louis Batiffol for his "Republiques Alsaciennes." THE GOOD THINGS OF THIS LIFE. (From the French of Aristophe Plantin, 16th Century.) Give me an house, convenient, clean, and fair; . . An old-world garden with its fruitful walls; Orchards and spreading vines; a few tried thralls; ■_ ' - A faithful wife unspent with children's care. No debts, no quarrels, lust, or lawyer's snare (...'' No irksome sharing of ancestral balls; Desiring little, deaf to ambitious calls, Or aught beside that simple folk forswear. Grant me to live in low estate at ease, In true devotion telling out my days; Give mo a soul at peaco from passionate ways, A fearless mind unmoved by man or fate< So, praising God, I'll graft and prune my trees Till death comes softly to my garden gate. By Reginald L. JHine, in tha London Nation. Definition of the word "Soviet" is as necessary to an understanding of Russian events as •an understanding of Ulianov's psychology. Charles Edward Russell; in " Bolshevism and the United States," writes:—"This somewhat formidable word means merely a legislative and governing assembly of elected delegates. A City Council, a, Board of County Commissioners, a State Legislature, or the Congress of United States might be a Soviet. Soviets quickly took the place of the old Municipal Councils in the towns and cities. Every GovernI ment (or province) has its Soviet, ostensibly, elected by the vote of the people." The 0.. Henry Hotel was opened in Greensboro, ,N.C, recently, and the Greensboro Daily News published a special O. Henry edition in recognition lof the event. Various citizens recall I well the.local pride in the youthful ability of "Will Porter," as he is called in Greensboro, as a draughtsman, and the daring predictions of his associates that ( if he pursued his bent he would perhaps become as great a man as the cartoonist. Nast. One remarks that "Never did a humorist have a better opportunity to study the characteristics' of humanity than Will Porter, for in the early days of , very few of its citizens were in a hurry, and the drugstore was the hang-out of all the old-timers." He was, we are told, a most assiduous reader. His wit is remembered, and some quotations are given from humorous letters 'which he wrote to home-town friends from Texas. The issue includes at least a dozen pictures of the hotel, which seems to -contain no.. other memorial to the author than a steel ; engraving of him.' It,ought to have a small library, at least, with 0, Henry's books in prominent place. -