Reminiscences*
Samuel Clemens Enjoys a
Heart to Heart Talk with
Mark Twain

An old man with a white mane, lying in a bed strewn with the ashes of his cigars; pipes, tobacco, cigars at his elbows; a stenographer catching his words as he talks on, slowly, reminiscently an old teller of tales picking out of the jumble of his past those episodes, ideas, memories that come uppermost in his mind.

When Samuel Clemens set about leaving the world a record of himself as he saw himself, he resolved on a new method of autobiography. It comprised two new features: First, he would have no method. He would talk at his ease about whatever came first to his mind, leaving his readers to pluck unity from the disorder of his memories and opinions. This, he points out with not uncharacteristic complaisance, would be the perfect autobiography. Second, he specified that it should not be published until after his death. Thus, from the grave, he could speak his mind candidly, without reserve.

As a matter of fact, from the grave or otherwise, there is little in this account to shock the unwary or to change the opionions of those who have known him in his work. His memories paint the picture of a good man and a great American, but there is nothing to surprise or alarm the scholar.

His Life. "It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life richthese things are wholesome; but to begin it poor and PROSPECTIVELY rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it," says Samuel Clemens. He was born in Missouri, in an almost invisible village deep in mud or dust, as the case might be. His family had lost all their money, but owned 75,000 acres of undeveloped land on which they fed their hope of rapid wealth. The hope was not conducive to labor.

The town church rested on five-foot piles, had a log floor through which you saw the hogs that dwelt beneath. There were fleas enough for the whole congregation. On weekdays, the church was a schoolhouse.

Mr. Clemens Sr. kept a store; butter was six cents a pound. A slave-girl could be rented for $12 a year. The Doctor received $25 a year for doctoring an entire family, which meant gallons of castor oil gratis. Grandmothers were adequate physicians in the case of minor ailments. For tooth

MARK TWAIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY-with an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine (2 Vols.)-Harper ($10.00).

ache, you chose between the doctor and his tongs and a woman faith-healer who cured handily by the magic word "Believe!"

Young Samuel's career was variedtypesetter, river pilot, miner, editor, lecturer, writer. He settled in Hartford with a wife whom he affirms was the loveliest person he ever knew. He lost $190,000 on a typesetting machine that failed. Of his lawyer he writes: "He is a great, fat, good-natured, kindhearted, chicken-livered slave; with no more pride than a tramp, no more sand than a rabbit, no more moral sense than a wax figure and no more sex than

MR. TWAIN He was coached.

a tapeworm. He sincerely thinks he is honest; he sincerely thinks he is honorable."

When Mr. Clemens lost his entire fortune, he earned enough lecturing and writing to pay back every cent.

The first time he met Mrs. Cleveland (at the White House), he made her write on his card: "He did not," and sign it. He sent the card to his wife. She had written him, saying: "Don't wear your arctics in the White House."

Said he: "I do not laugh easily." It is said that there has never been a cheerful humorist. Mark Twain was philosophically and by temperament a pessimist.

Criticism he calls bitterly. "the most degraded of all trades." His daughter Susy, aged 12, however, he excepted. She was his chief critic, and with her sisters guided not only his work but his social conduct. From behind a screen they were wont to coach his behavior at the dinner table.

He had a good memory: "When I was younger I could remember anything whether it happened or not; but I am getting old and soon I shall remember only the latter."

The Significance. Lovers of Mark Twain will enjoy the book because he wrote it and because it fills out the pic

ture of a kindly, sad and great man. It adds little to the known facts about his life and opinions.

The Author is the creator of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, the Yankee who went to King Arthur's Court.

Elegance

THE ROMANTIC LADY-Michael Arlen-Doran ($2.50). Another volume of eloquent elegance and luxurious naughtiness from "the Harold Bell Wright of the sophisticates." The Romantic Lady, like These Charming People, is a collection of four short stories-one of them not very short. The Romantic Lady itself is the story of a lady of surpassing charm who chooses her husbands somewhat at random and divorces them with equal facility. Fay Richmond is about a man and a girl, and the realization of their love which came too late-but not too late for a still later fleeting consummation. Consuelo tells of another dazzling woman whose honor-and the physical well-being of whose illicit suitor-were saved by the opportune appearance of a cigar with a long, undisturbed ash. The Romance of Iris Poole is the tale of Red Antony and his brother Roger, of the revenge of Antony upon Roger, whom he hated even as he admired him.

Michael Arlen (Dikran Kuyumjian, Armenian) is reported to be in the U. S.

Problems

THE BACK OF THE BOOK-Margaret Leech-Boni & Liveright ($2.00). Vergie Stilson was 28 years of age and not unattractive. She pictured herself as "an author of brilliant subtlety," until she found that her embryo novel was no more than a bundle of disjointed reminiscences. Meanwhile, she worked in the offices of Good Taste. Men came and went. There was Roger, the kindly ironist, who married her young sister, "Pet," after long courtship of herself. There was little Crump, who had all the charm of a puppy dog. There was Roy Peck, the publicist with the genial personal touch. She loved Roy, but his environment proved too strong for her love. Finally there was Louis Bayard, cultured, a little dried up, in whose elegance she finally found comfort.

Everywhere she sought-but her tortured, inquiring mind never found the "answers in the back of the book." This novel has been highly received by such critics as Edna Ferber, F. P. A., Heywood Broun, Laurence Stallings.

Esthete

PAULUS Fy-Helene Mullins and Marie Gallegher-McBride ($2.00). Ronald Firbank and Daisy Ashford might well have collaborated to produce this picture of the perfect esthete

in his home. Paulus was a teacher of French, a student of the graces. With his cat, the sympathetic Cez, he dwelt in a little gem of an apartment, surrounded by precious bibelots. Tragedy came into his delicately ordered life with the death of Cez and the suicide of Mimi, whom he knew only through her letters, but whom he did not have to know in order to love. Others of his loves were Fan-Fan and Mary. Unhappily, Fan-Fan grew fat and coarse, Mary entered a convent and disappointingly turned out to be not a virgin, after all. Life began to seem very futile to Paulus. He became a monk to be near Mary. Very soon he was released from the obnoxious life of the monastery by a professional call from Death. Arrived in Heaven, Paulus meets God. "You are a man after my own heart, Paulus Fy," says God. They embrace, and the book ends.

The book is about the last word in flippant sophistication. The co-authors (rumored to be one and the same person) toss a theme somewhat lighter than a bubble about their pages, grazing matters sacred and profane in its progress.

Laura Jean Libbey.

A Wedding at Every Book's End

Thomas Hardy, Sinclair Lewis, the late Anatole France have variously been talked of as the best known of contemporary writers. But the dwelling-place of renown is not always in the high places. The Sophisticati may sneer; but the reading public extends even to the scullery and the attic. A census of that mysterious body would not impossibly reveal an equal extent of the fame of humbler wielders of the pen. The laughter of Olympus is no barrier to the literary delectation of the barely literate.

Laura Jean Libbey, as much of an institution in our country as Christopher Columbus, the hot dog, Pike's Peak, the Statue of Liberty, is dead at the age of 62. Her passing means a severe dearth in the reading-matter of millions of the great submerged. She was to the masses what Michael Arlen temporarily threatens to become to the classes.

Her novels number 82. Two are to be published posthumously. She was not a slow and painstaking writer, stringing her words like gems through hours of precious toil. She allowed twenty chapters to a novel, wrote a chapter a day.* Her themes never varied. They always had to do with love-fervid, magnificent love. Her

*Said she: "I never have had to struggle to succeed in completing a book. I always have found it easy to write. Usually, I figured twenty chapters a day and then proceeded to write one chapter a day; but sometimes there were several days between chapters."

on

exemplary heroes and heroines she invariably nursed benevolently to a final altar at least to an engagement ring. They might always be presumed to live happily ever after.

Her first work was published in The New York Ledger when she was 14. Among her subsequent titles are: Lovers Once but Strangers Now, That Pretty Young Girl, Miss Middleton's Lover, which was dramatized as Parted on Her Bridal Tour, A Forbidden Marriage, Olive's Courtship, When His Love Grew Cold.

The Weekly Reviews
John Farrar Compliments
Them All

Literary reviews crowd the horizon. One sun sets as another rises. What of the three chief holders of the present sky: Books (issued as a Sunday supplement by The New York Herald Tribune), The Saturday Review (TIME'S Own) and The Literary Review (issued as a Saturday supplement by The New York Evening Post)? I read all three and consider it a necessary part of my education. All three have their merits.

The Literary Review of Editor W. Orton Tewson follows somewhat in the footsteps of Arthur Maurice's old supplement on The Sun. Edited to reach a large number of people and to interest them in books, it is a journalistic performance of merit, and I find it always interesting. It publishes many illustrations in black and white, some of which are good and some of which are not. Its chief merit is that it is seldom dull-and I can think of few better recommendations for magazine of this sort.

a

The Saturday Review is as authoritative as all followers of Editor Canby knew it would be. Its editorials are clear, its reviewers carefully chosen. Its essays, if somewhat academic, have a certain charm. Mr. Morley's “The Bowling Green" and Mr. William Benet's "The Phoenix Nest" recommend it heartily to the large personal followings of these gentlemen. It is not in any sense a supplement to a paper. It is a review in the traditions of the English reviews, with somewhat of the complexion of The Times Literary Supplement; or rather, perhaps, with more of the manner of a political weekly without the politics.

Editors Stuart Pratt Sherman and Irita Van Doren of Books have been able to combine dignity with readability to an unusual degree. The choice between The Saturday Review and Books is difficult to make. It will depend, largely, on your feeling for Messrs. Canby and Sherman; on which you prefer as a critic and writer of stimulating editorials-for both write editorials and both are stimulating.

Miss Anne Carroll Moore's survey of children's literature in Books is unusual and Isabel Patterson does the gossip, taking her place with Burton Rascoe, with Morley, with Benet, with the anonymous and changing Kenel Digby.

Whether or not these supplements survive, it is interesting and important that the public apparently wants them and wants, too, in large quantities the Book Review section of The New York Times, which, as a purveyor of book news, has never been excelled and is the most lavishly and, I think, tastefully illustrated of all. It has, in a way, less personality, but it is good. So are they all. What does it mean? That we are reading more books than before and reading them more intelligently?

J. F.

CINEMA

The New Pictures

The Bandolero. Bandits and bullfights all wound round with a shawl of Spanish atmosphere make a good start. In the detail and fineness of photography, the pace is excellently maintained. Over-complication of narrative with divided interest between the bullfight hero and the bandit hero check the proceedings slightly. Bullfight hero's father has murdered bandit hero's wife. Bandit hero accordingly objects seriously to marriage between his daughter (Renée Adorée), and bullfight hero. The horns of the dilemma shift to the horns of the bull. Bull gores bullfight hero. Daughter weeps and bandit hero cannot bear that. Happiness.

Madonna of the Streets. Nazimova is the wicked wench who gets religion in the last reel. She is still a good actress, individualistic, still Nazimova. Limehouse is the locale. Into its smoky dens and muddy passages comes the Rev. John Morton to found a mission. He inherits a million pounds and the girl marries him to help distribute it. When he distributes it to the poor instead of to her, she displays irritation. Back to the streets he hurls her. By this time she finds she loves him and not his money and crawls back to his chapel dving. Opportunity for a miracle, which he forthwith performs.

Manhattan. R. H. Burnside, who used to devise and launch the homeric spectacles at the Hippodrome, has directed his first picture. The expansiveness of the movies seems to agree with him. In the generally entertaining document he starts with the purchase of Manhattan Island for $24. Later events develop into a fairly normal gang picture with Spike reforming and marrying the little angel of the slums.

New Plays

Mme. Simone. The words and music of criticism and acclaim have been combined endlessly to record the career of this French actress, long a personage among the principals of the Parisian stage. She has visited in this vicinity before to barter her accomplishments with local buyers; therefore the major item of importance regarding her return is her importer. Anne Nichols is the individual. Hitherto, Miss Nichols has been chiefly conspicuous as the author and impresario of the ubiquitous Abie's Irish Rose. Artistically one of the worst and financially the greatest achievement of the U. S. Theatre, Abie has put Miss Nichols upon uneasy street. It has rendered her prosperous in dollar bills and penniless in artistic admiration. There are those who suggest irreverently that Miss Nichols is shriving herself before the critics by importing accredited Art.

For Mme. Simone is as definitely Art as Abie's Irish Rose is indefinitely hokum. The French tradition is precise, rigorous and quite apart from life. Stage effects have been tested, analyzed and put up in little packages. Declamation and gesture have been rubbed by custom until they shine like polished pendants. In diagrams and model groups they cluster contentedly about the theatre and quite diffuse the raw beams of light and life.

Therefore the playgoer nourished on the realism toward which our better Broadway tendencies have turned will lack sympathy for Mme. Simone. She will bewilder him a little and probably annoy him. Only if he concedes the virtue of her schooling will he enjoy the lessons she has learned so well. Of France and the Frenchman's Theatre she is a cardinal example. As such she will compel intelligent attention.

Her repertoire opened with L'Aiglon, written by Edmond Rostand for Bernhardt. Following the example of that great actress, Mme. Simone plays the leading male rôle, that of Napoleon's son. She will follow with Naked, a play by Pirandello, new to America. For the third week, the play will be Mme. Sans-Gêne. Classics will complete the repertoire.

Stark Young-"Rhythm and color in little frames and patterns from the classical tradition. A kind of sporting mental delight in hearing Mme. Simone take the soaring speeches provided for her, to see with what attack she dispatches them one

after another, like walking a tight rope through a heavenly grammar."

Tiger Cats. This department can scarcely putter about any longer with

MISS CORNELL "Crookedly alluring."

the season's drama without presenting to its followers the uncomfortable observation that the season's drama is a most gaunt and tattered contribution to the Theatre's annually increasing family. Two good plays only have come in (What Price Glory? and The Guardsman). The prospects of a weedy fall crop were certified when David Belasco's opening production went onto the first night threshing-floor and returned an incredibly low per cent of entertainment. Just why the autumn's offerings, while high in quantity, have been meagre in merit no one can explain. The fact remains.

Robert Loraine, an English actor of some prominence, was lured from London to play Tiger Cats. He impersonates an "eminent neurologist" who hates his wife mentally and craves her physically. So sharp becomes the inner struggle that he shoots her in the second act. By the end of the evening, they have agreed that they love each other. From every normal point of view, it seems entirely probable that he will shoot her again in a week or two. As his aim grows progressively better with practice, he will no doubt succeed in killing her off before the year is out.

Katherine Cornell gave to the part of the shallow, feline wife an acrid

brilliance that justified in part the socalled entertainment. A most doggedly unpleasant wife, yet somehow crookedly alluring, she made the author's thesis possible if not plausible. When she was on the stage, streaks of gleaming silver showed through the leaden surface of the play.

Alexander Woollcott-"Miss Cornell and her finely competent performance provided the only interest to sustain us through a ponderous and uneventful evening."

Heywood Broun-"I cannot remember as much as five minutes in the entire evening which were not tiresome."

Comedienne. Somewhere in France this little portrait was first found. Presumably in some French theatre it amused the crowds that came to gaze. In importation all its glitter died away. It is the tale of an actress who became a grandmother and retired to Virginia. By the last act she is back at the stage door. Charlotte Walker was immoderately miscast in the part. Cyril Keightley did very little as head man.

Alan Dale-"Sheer inadequacy and torture."

Ashes. Florence Reed is in tears again. Since she can go down to the centre of the stage and have a good cry better than almost any actress we have, the exhibition is bound to manifest some merit. Miss Reed's tears are shed principally over her baby. This year it is a perfectly legitimate baby, somewhat contrary to the custom of her recent plays. It dies just as she is about to go on to play the big scene in Antony and Cleopatra.

She screams she can't go on, and then does. In the last act, her husband turns out to be unfaithful. She leaves for England-a great actress but a failure in the home. All this is told very seriously, and with a singular tedium.

Gilbert W. Gabriel-"Doused in trite, puff-cheeked sentiments, only now and then cured by humor."

Alexander Woollcott - "A gaudy chromo, evidently selected because it provided so many emotional crises in which to exhibit the sundry talents of Miss Florence Reed."

Heywood Broun-"I am not at all sure that the ashman would accept it. He would be much more likely to leave it for his fellow city employe with the other cart."

Box 19

Judge Elbert H. Gary has bought Box 19 in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan Opera House. The box belonged to the estate of Henry C. Frick, whose family were to be seen in it for some years before his death. How much Judge Gary paid for his box is not known. "Two hundred thousand dollars!" said idle gossips. (They attempted to substantiate this statement by recalling that one William Ross Proctor paid $200,000 for Box 26 some years ago.)

The "golden horseshoe" is SO called because its 35 boxes-the lower row, known as the parterre-are roughly in the shape of a horseshoe, the stage being in the heel. A gala night at the opera concentrates about as much wealth in this broken ellipse as in any other given spot on the earth's surface.

Parterre boxes are not necessarily the ideal place from which to enjoy an opera. Those nearest the stage are signally bad-both for eye and ear. On the other hand, they are admirable localities from which to be seen; and their owners or lessees are as a rule extremely amiable about permitting the less exalted attendance to concentrate admiring gazes upon a galaxy of beauty, gems, gowns, furs.

The best locations are the boxes in the rear-in the toe of the horseshoe. These are perhaps actually the most satisfactory seats in the house from any point of view. Mr. Gary's purchase is just around the turn, on the downtown side of the auditorium. It's next neighbor, toward the stage, is the box owned jointly by Mrs. Henry White and Mrs. H. McK. Twombly, daughters of the late William H. Vanderbilt.

Chicago

Mr. Honegger's Pacific 231 (TIME, Oct. 27) has arrived in Chicago. This rhapsodic translation into musical terms of the progress of a locomotive dashing through the night recently met with an enthusiastic reception when introduced to U. S. audiences by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Chicago, accustomed to the rush and roar of Wolverines and 20th Century Limiteds, is a trifle blasé about locomotives-particularly musical ones. The audience reacted to Mr. Honegger's composition with chuckles rather than cheers. One Hackett, reviewer for The Evening Post, was particularly amused. He commented in a mood of tolerant banter. Among other things, he remarked of Mr. Honegger: .. he

66

might as well amuse himself with this toy as any other."

Teacher Duncan

Isadora Duncan, dancer and political revolutionist, came by air from Russia to Berlin, kept an audience waiting half an hour, apologized for orchestra,

Press Illustrating Service

ISADORA DUNCAN

The Kaiser did not understand. director, lack of rehearsal, one thing and another, danced Tchaikovsky Pathétique. After the performance, she said her days of solo dancing were over. Everyone agreed.

Now she is going to undertake to pass on her torch. She will open a school in Berlin for children-children of the masses only. She expects about 500 pupils.

Some 22 years ago, Miss Duncan first danced in Berlin. The Kaiser did not understand her art. She went to France, looking for liberty. Through the War, she danced the Marseillaise; after the War, she decided that the Marseillaise was not free enough for her. Still seeking the authentic spirit of liberty, she went to Russia. There she danced the Internationale, to her final satisfaction. In the Internationale alone she felt that liberty found real expression.

Pedagogy

Past master of the art of musical pedagogy is Leopold Auer, veteran professor.

The appearance of a new pupil of Mr. Auer is in itself the signal for alert ears. So a discriminating audience gathered in Aeolian Hall, Manhat

Ireland's Anthem

National anthems are not made to order. You can't tell a person to compose one and then arbitrarily adopt it. They spring full-grown from the national consciousness. They are born. not in the study, but in moments of stress, in great national crises.

The Marseillaise grew out of an hysterical mob. The Star-Spangled Banner was inspired by the bursting of bombs by night. Most national anthems are old songs whose symbolic significance came to them later-almost unconsciously. Most of them are worthless as poetry. Many are not notable as music.

Ireland, overlooking the psychology of patriotic song, has tried to get an anthem with the aid of a cash prize. Three judges, literary artists all (among them W. B. Yeats), acted as judges. Not one of the hundreds of anthems submitted was deemed worthy. This was to be expected. It isn't the way to get an anthem. Ireland may have one already without knowing it. The Irish national anthem, when it is adopted. will come straight from hot Irish hearts.

EDUCATION

Strike

Have students the right to strike? Disapproving of the dictates of their pastors and masters, may pupils push aside their books and declare, as a body, that they will cease to be pupils until the pastors and masters meet their demands?

For five days last week, the trustees of Clemson College (near Spartanburg. S. C.) deliberated thus. The particular case they had to decide was modified from the question in general by the fact that Clemson is a military college. with explicit regulations on "desertion" and "deliberations or discussions among cadets." The Clemson case:

R. F. Holohan, senior class President,

football player, "most popular cadet," was dismissed by the authorities on a charge of drinking intoxicating fluids. Already having certain "grievances" about the mess hall (allegedly suspicious-looking "wieners," chicken "unfit for food") some 250 of the 1,100 cadets signified their pain over Holohan's sentence by leaving the campus. Clemson alumni pleaded with the "strikers" to take their case before the trustees, as provided in the regulations; and though many of the students were obdurate, others yielded, held a meeting, formed a student committee, submitted petitions.

The Clemson trustees settled their case by dismissing 23 Seniors, suspending 108 Juniors and four Seniors for the balance of this year. Other insurgents were sentenced to penal marching and deprived of privileges. To an interested outside world, these sentences, in the light of Clemson's disciplinary regulations, appeared just.

At Yale

Yale University, confronted with a housing problem by reason of increased enrolment, settled the quandry in a manner which seemed, to the unbiased observer, direct enough. A new dormitory was designed, a site chosen on the campus, and early one morning some workmen went out with picks and broke ground. Instantly the University was swept with winds, avalanches, storms, of protest, objection, controversy. The dormitory had been designed as a reproduction of Connecticut Hall, home of the fathers of Yale, in their day the only building on the Campus.* That any other should be erected, whether in imitation or in rivalry, was a thing Yale professors, alumni, undergraduates could ill stomach.

The Yale Daily News, undergraduate newspaper, protested that "the whole matter was brought about in rather underhanded fashion and that the college faculty was purposely disregarded throughout." A petition signed by 480 students was handed to Dr. James Rowland Angell, President, adjuring him to "take immediate action to suspend work on the foundation until undergraduate opinion shall have been consulted." Said Lewis S. Welch, onetime editor of the Alumni Weekly: "There is to be set up, without talking it over with the family, a new 'Old Home,' an imitation of the place where Yale's forbears lived. It will make Connecticut Hall a sample, not a shrine."

In the College Chapel, President Angell addressed the Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores, insisted that the members of the Corporation had the interest and welfare of the campus at heart. Building operations continued.

*Other buildings bound the rectangular campus on all sides. Connecticut Hall occupies one small corner of the enclosure.

ART

Mr. Widener's Rembrandts

Probably the greatest Rembrandt collection in the world, together with other works of art comprising Joseph E. Widener's $50,000,000 collection, is to be left to the public. Mr. Widener has not yet stated whether the City of Philadelphia or

International

MR. WIDENER

Not a money-lender.

the Metropolitan Museum, Manhattan, is to be the recipient.

The Rembrandts include the landscape, The Mill (said to have cost $500,000), Portrait of Saskia; Study of an Old Man; Portrait of Himself; The Philosopher; Head of an Aged Woman; The Apostle Paul; The Circumcision; Head of St. Matthew; Portrait of a Man with a Letter; Descent from the Cross (also reported to have cost $500,000).

Two portraits in his collection (A Gentleman With High Hat and Gloves in Right Hand; and A Lady with Ostrich Feather Fan in Right Hand) are the subject of the suit instituted in the Supreme Court by Prince Yusupov, a participant in the arduous murder of Monk Rasputin. Yusupov sold the pictures to Mr. Widener in 1921, but maintains that a clause in the contract gave him the privilege of repurchase at the original price plus 8% interest, provided he used his own money and wanted the pictures for his own enjoyment alone.

"Assassin," "degenerate," "buffoon," "joke," were some of the terms applied to the Prince by Mr. Widener. "Any man who paints his

face and blackens his eyes is a joke," further commented Mr. Widener. Regarding the sale of any items in his collection, he remarked:

"I am neither an art dealer nor a money-lender. I am an art collector. I have nothing for sale and hope I never shall."

RELIGION

Lutheran Unity

There are many branches of the Lutheran Church in this country, formed on racial lines.

Many have been amalgamated in the United Lutheran Church. This organization held its greatest gathering in Chicago last week. Its chief pronouncement was a plea for further unity among all American Luth

erans.

Fosdick

Out. Pursuant to the insistent demands of the Presbyterian Church headed by Moderator Macartney and voiced by William J. Bryan, the First Presbyterian Church of New York accepted the resignation of Harry Emerson Fosdick as associate pastor.

In. The officers of the First Church then despatched to Dr. Fosdick a letter of invitation which read in part as follows:

"Dear Dr. Fosdick:

"We have before us your letter of Sept. 7 tendering your resignation as associate minister of the First Presbyterian Church. While we regret your inability to become a Presbyterian minister, we understand your reasons, and from every quarter we hear expressions of approval of your forceful and dignified attitude.

"In view of your decision and the opinion of the General Assembly that if you should decline to enter the Presbyterian Church the relation of associate minister should not continue, we have felt compelled, with great reluctance but with a desire to be loyal, to recommend acceptance of your resignation.

"We invited you to enter into this relationship and you accepted our invitation in the spirit of Christian fellowship and with the desire to promote Christian union. This action was in harmony with the declared purpose of our denomination.

"Therefore, after your resignation as associate minister takes effect, we invite you to make it your custom when when not otherwise engaged to preach in our pulpit on Sunday mornings. We cannot believe that this is in opposi