Hanover Browsing

HENRY FORD thought so much of George Matthew Adams' syndicated Today's Talks as "messages of true friendship and character building" that he bought his birthplace in Saline, Michigan, and moved it to Dearborn Village. George Matthew Adams has thought enough of Dartmouth to give Baker Library thousands of dollars worth of rare books and is now the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Friends of the Dartmouth Library. I think so much of George that I want to give an honest plug for his recently published book Better Than Gold (Duell, Sloan & Pearce).

First of all let me say that G. M. A. is a self-made man, the son of a Baptist preacher, who came up the hard way. He is a man of wide and varied experience, a great ana faithful lover of nature, a book collector of real repute, widely read, a patron of the arts, and a man of fine taste. In Better Than Gold, a title taken from a Lincoln quotation, he has poured out his heart. His talks are widely read every day from coast to coast both in the United States and Canada. He will not please the sophisticate probably, but he has helped and encouraged the plain people of America more than any recent writer I can think of. He has certainly raised the literary tastes of tens of thousands. I know him well and have a great respect for what he accomplishes in the lives of many. In this book from more than ten thousand talks he has chosen two hundred and fifty. They range from "About First Editions" to his widely quoted "A Mother's Prayer." His short talks are not always profound; they are, however, homely, wise, friendly, and cheerful stuff. I wish the book and George great success.

F. W. Bronson has written a most readable and exciting mystery in The Bulldog Has the Key (Farrar Straus). The setting is the 25th reunion of the Class of 1922 of Yale College. As a fellow member of the Class of 1922 I can vouch for the authenticity of his reunion atmosphere. New Haven makes for more variety but old grads are much the. same the country over.

All alumni and their wives will enjoy this book and especially those who like murder stories. This one is well above the average and deals with a million dollars worth of diamonds, a Yale professor, a blonde, and a shrewd operator of the Class of 1922. Though this is not, I am glad to report, of the scrambled eggs, toast and coffee school with a blonde in every bed, it is a lively, pleasantly realistic and tough tale guaranteed to keep your interest.

"The saddest tale we have to tell Fol de rol de rol rol rol! Is when we bid old Yale Farewell Fol de rol de rol rol rol.... !"

For real amusement I venture to recommend Anthony Powell's new edition of John Aubrey's Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings (Cresset Press, London). He has been called the first English biographer and his stuff is amusing, enlightening (even if at times unreliable), and even instructive in throwing light on the great of the seventeenth century. This is a book to re-read many times.

I have also enjoyed Sean O'Faolain's The Irish, available in a "Penguin" for a shilling. Although O'Faolain lives in Dublin, and is thoroughly Irish, he has had two of his books banned in Eire, and writes as honesty dictates. Not as biting as Liam O'Flaherty's A Tourist Guide toIreland, this is an intelligent and knowing exposition of Irish achievement and its contribution to civilization.

Mrs. Elizabeth W. Hayward, manager of the Dartmouth Dining Association, very generously gave me a signed first edition of Henry Beston's helpful book Herbs and the Earth published in 1935 by Doubleday, Doran. For all herbalists and those interested in cooking with basil, sage, rue, sweet marjoram, hyssop, or lavender. All I am used to is salt and pepper but gourmets will get subtle and refined advice. As Beston told me recently for a clam chowder, "Just a touch of mace .... just a touch." (Mace: "a kind of fragrant aromatic spice consisting of the dried outer fibrous covering of the nutmeg.")

For those whose brains like a little exercise now and then I can recommend Ideological Differences and World Order edited by F. S. C. Northrop, author of The Meeting of East and West. Here you will find many spokesmen from a great variety of cultures and points of view. The authors include Roscoe Pound, Fung Yu-Lan, Matila Ghyka, Leopoldo Zea (sounds like a Notre Dame line up), Vallarta, Birker (Balliol), Romero, Sorokin, and Charles Montagu Bakewell who is an eminent American philosopher now retired. Heavy stuff at times but quite illuminating.