voluntarily sit and watch corpulent Italian, Spanish, French or German aliens and a few Americans, trained in Europe and alienized, enacting, upon the stage, scenes of Latin passion, seductions, betrayals, murders, assassinations, insanity, jealousy, disease and death. The horrible nature of operatic librettos is intensified by poignant, passionate music, acting and singing. The American mind, even in its worst phases, cannot produce a genuine grand opera. It is distinctly a foreign, alien expression, with a far-reaching influence for evil. Today, everyone knows the mental nature of cause and effect; and one cannot witness horrible scenes or be mentally a participant in corrupt and degraded situations without receiving a poisonous taint. . . . Thus The Standard, Ku Klux Klan organ.

Leginska

Certain components of great opera audiences-though they have paid well for their plush stalls or rigid chairs, though a magnificent scene is discovered before them, though famed singers appear, deathless music plays are nevertheless observed to close their eyes. Are they lamentable creatures? Poor dolts who have no eye for the noble, no ear for the exquisite? Long have they been so considered by those other operagoers whose eyes remain open. Not so are they regarded by Miss Leginska, English pianist-composer-conductor, whose opera written around Thackeray's story The Rose and the Ring is soon to have its première. She holds the theory that these 40-winkers close their eyes, not because they are bored, but because they fear to be disenchanted.

They are those idealists who are more often perturbed by what they see than ravished by what they hear; who have listened, at Tosca, to an aria that spoke to them of all the rapture, the pathos of a consummate and fated love, and have seen a stubby tenor waddle forward on tiptoe to knead the arms of a diva who outtopped him by several inches; who have heard, in Bohême, a little catch, light as a falling feather, gay as a string of beads, delivered by a Musetta under whom a property table, reinforced with iron struts, trembled, creaked, tottered. These idealists, holds Madame Leginska, should be placated. Hence, in her forthcoming opera, there will be two complete casts-one of voiceless actors who will elegantly posture and grimace on the stage, one of unseen singers, who will yodel from a pit, concealed with the instruments of the orchestra. Said she: "Why should a man be exhibited on the stage, throwing out his arms and legs in the stilted fashion of bygone times just because he can sing? For my opera, I want good actors on the stage-good singers in the pit."

farm-life. It is the kind of thing the spectator will object to on the score that existence cannot possibly be so brutal. A young wife of an old farmer forfeits her claim to beatitude by lusting after the farmer's son. The latter couple have a child which stands between its father and his stony heritage of farm-land. He corrodes what little she has left of happiness in recriminations; and she smothers the child. The last step is the gallows.

Mary Morris, an actress only moderately familiar to the world, takes the leading rôle and fashions it into one of the great delineations of the season. There are sceptics who deny the force of her performance, arguing that had she played the part to the ultimate bitterness of the writing the visitor would be unable to remain in the theatre. Of the merits of this contention the individual will have to decide. Certainly the performance is one that no thoughtful playgoer can omit from his agenda.

Théâtre de l'Odéon. Two years ago, Russia contributed the Moscow Art Theatre; last season, Italy gave us Duse; Firmin Gémier and his Odéon troupe are the famous foreigners who talk to the playgoer in

an unfamiliar tongue this season. Their talk is French.

Their repertoire opened with L'Homme Qui Assassina by Pierre Frondaie. French fondness for dramatic triangles was elaborated in a pentagonal affair. The husband was killed; the wife learned to her dismay that she loved the man who betrayed her. Also implicated were a mistress of the husband and the murderer who loved the wife.

Le Procureur Hallers came next. It was a frank melodrama on the Jekyll and Hyde theme with a woman added.

Third was L'Homme et ses Fantômes by H. R. Lenormand. Like his Failures, which the Theatre Guild produced last year, the play was episodic. In content, it dealt with a modern Don Juan.

Students versed in the French Theatre asserted that the company was not the Odéon's "original." These same students agreed that it was, nevertheless, satisfactorily representative. To culture-seeking but untraveled Americans, it seemed a keenly trained troupe depending on team work rather than individual brilliance. Firmin Gémier, they thought, was an exceptionally intelligent actor of about the calibre of their own Henry Miller.

Silence. Time was when the melodrama factories worked double shift turning out absorbing trash to the public taste. Of late years, the melodrama market has slumped and the mental machineries turned to other products. Max Marcin caught the operators napping with a sound old timer, perfectly played by H. B. Warner and geared so high that even the wicked old critics felt thrills crawling busily about them.

The visitor is ushered into the death house of a Western penitentiary. In five hours, Jim Warren is to die for a murder he did not commit. Two hours later, Jim gets out of the electric chair, the visitor out of his orchestra chair and everyone goes home happily. Meanwhile, the action dips into the past and depicts the murder, committed by the daughter of the criminal for whose sake he was about to die.

Shipwrecked owes more to Science than it does to Shakespeare. By an ingenious combination of scenery and electricity, a burning ship at sea crackles before the audience's eyes. The rest is melodrama.

The heroine suffers with a somewhat inflamed past which seems to be no fault of her own. She dives into

Madame Pompadour. All Europe has hummed and hopped to the melodies of Leo Fall. They had their introduction to the U. S. in a costly and cumbersome production. Wilda Bennett played the difficult title rôle when Hope Hampton, onetime cinema actress, was dismissed at the eleventh hour. Critics say that neither had the essential domination to pay the rôle its due. With the exception of Wanda Lyon, the remainder of the company was ill selected. The humor of the event was in the hands of Clare Kummer who, contrary to her custom, did a dull job. The scenery, however, was superb; and the show emerged as the most beautiful in Manhattan. Unfortunately beauty and melody cannot carry an operetta unassisted.

Simon Called Peter. The church, as anyone will recall who read Robert Keable's novel, bears the brunt of the attack. A British Army chaplain does his level best to be a good fellow and finds that being a good fellow and remaining on the level best make an awkward combination.

It appeared as though the adapters (Jules Eckert Goodman and Edward Knoblock) were chiefly concerned with success. They pulled the plot out of shape and hung the whole evening on a severe seduction scene. A French cocotte pretty nearly undresses on the stage in order to disturb the hero to the point of incontinence. Curiously enough, the opening night audience found this episode laughable. Their findings rather wrenched the authors' purposes.

Robert Louis Stevenson* Critical Inspection of a Myth

"The Stevenson Myth." It is an open question whether Stevenson is loved more for his work or his work for him. Certainly the worship of

AUTHOR STEVENSON

Seraph? Effigy? Knight? Brigand? authors has never gone to greater lengths-lengths possibly of questionable value to their object. Idolatry has made of R. L. S. a figure dizzily perched on the precarious eminence of perfection. He is permitted no faults, no weaknesses--other than the exalted one of physical illhealth. On the other hand, there have been daring iconoclasts no less superlative in their attacks upon this knight of the spotless scutcheonnotably W. E. Henley, his erstwhile patron and intimate, who registered savage protest against the "Seraph in Chocolate," the "Barley-Sugar Effigy" of legend. With nicely considered moderation, Mr. Steuart aims at the truth behind the haze of contradiction.

The Man Stevenson. ". . . He was badly put together, a slithering, loose flail of a fellow, all joints, elbows and exposed spindle shanks, his trousers being generally a foot too short in the leg. He was so like a scarecrow that one almost expected him to creak in the wind. . . his long lank hair fell straggling to his shoulders, giving him the look of a quack or a gypsy." "In class, when it pleased him to attend, he was the worst-behaved man of my acquaintance."

*ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY-John H. Steuart-Little, Brown (2 vol., $8.00).

This picture of R. L. S. from a fel low-student is not inaccurate for his entire career As he grew older, his tubercular thinness tended toward emaciation. Always he delighted to emphasize his eccentricities. His queer foreign face, bright-eyed and animated, peered forth under a battered straw hat. He was wont to wear velvet jackets, brigandisi cloaks, black shirts, loose collarsthe whole as shabby and disrepu table as any tramp's. Thus garbed he delighted in the astonished gaze of the passers-by.

Stevenson himself said that he was forced to keep low company because he could not afford better. "I was the companion of seamen, chimneysweeps and thieves," says he, "not without a touch of swagger." To his disreputable drunken intimates of bars and "howffs", he was known as "velvet-coat," and amongst them he sowed his wild oats with a generous hand. He was socially ostracised. Victorian smugness turned on him a discreet back.

Chiefest and best known among his peccant intimates of those stormy days was the lady known as "Claire", a Highland lass, actually named Kate Drummond, "slim and dark. very trim and neat, with jet-black hair." She was one of the class aptly known as "unfortunates", but Stevenson's affection for her appears not to have been wholly sensual Rather she filled a gap for him. He was a lonely youth, with few intimates other than his drunken cro nies. She stands out significantly among all his later amours-repu table and otherwise. And Stevenson ever the lover, his hot eager nature never happy unless his emotions were fed with passion.

was

Stevenson is spoken of as perpetually gay in the midst of physical agony, financial reverses, artistic disappointment. It is true that he was of a buoyant nature-a genial bubble riding stormy seas. But he was subject to fits of overwhelming depres sion. "Oh Medea, kill me or make me young again!" he cries at the age of 23.

The famous quarrel with Henley, his early friend and supporter, Mr. Steuart treats at length. It was not. as generally supposed, a sudden thing, but the result of a succession of minor episodes. And it was, it appears, largely the fault of Stevenson, whose hot rage would never forgive a fancied disloyalty. Henley himself never harbored resentment, in spite of his disparaging criticism of his former friend, often regarded as evidence of a vengeful nature. Stevenson's love of pose, his affec

tations, his theatric sense Mr. Steuart sees again in his last days in Samoa, as a sort of white chief, a lord of the manor among the admiring natives. "A bouncing egotist who loves the limelight as a beachcomber loves rum," said his neighbors.

The Biography. For the first time, R. L. S. is observed without prejudice. And for the first time the facts appear at last to be accessible about this strange, heroic figure. Mr. Steuart does not slur over his defects. He sets down the facts accurately but sympathetically, substitutes for the idol a man. His estimate of Stevenson's work is careful and just. He sees him as a writer not of the first rank-a master of the English language, doing perfectly things of secondary significance. But whatever his merits as an artist, as a man he stands among the heroes.

Dikran Kuyumjian

We see

We

THE LONDON VENTURE Michael Arlen Doran ($2.50). Again the "Harold Bell Wright of the sophisticates" tosses a volume to eager admirers. In this case, it is his first book, an autobiographical volume. the young Armenian in his early days as a lonely essayist in London. meet for the first time Shelmerdene, "that lovely lady." We find incorporated a first draft of the first story in These Charming People. We learn, in a gracefully whimsical introduction, how it was that Mr. Dikran Kuyumjian chanced to adopt the less complex and more indigenous cognomen under which he has become so pleasantly-and to himself, profitably-known. On the whole, The London Venture will be of some considerable interest to those who crave to know the man behind the penname, to those who eagerly lap every drop of ink that may flow from his deft pen, to those who like to proclaim themselves as having read "every word" any given writer has ever written. It is not a good book with which to make Mr. Arlen's acquaintance.

Slave Trade

THE SLAVE SHIP-Mary JohnstonLittle, Brown ($2.00). David Scott happened to be so born that he quite naturally fought for the Stuarts at Culloden. For that culpable error in prenatal judgment he was arrested and condemned to be shipped as a political slave to Barbados or Virginia.

David Scott, however, was a lad of spirit, decided against the King and the King's men, broke jail, was not recaptured for some time. Sent to Virginia, he worked in the forests and fields of the new country in a capacity only nominally above that of the African slaves, his co-workers. Again he escaped to a ship in Norfolk Harbor, which proved unfortunately to be her

self a slaver. The captain, happily, was his kinsman. Thus, David Scott rose to be a captain in the slave trade, rum and the force of habit hardening him to his task. Little by little he is brought in the end to see the light and realize the iniquitous character of his way of life. A da capo climax brings him back to the Virginia tobacco fields.

Nobel Prize

Again the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded by the Swedish Academy. Again no American had arisen to such distinction. The recipient was Ladislas St. Reymont, Pole, aged 56, author of 23 volumes of short stories and novels, in particular author of The Peasants (4 vols., 1902-06), for which the prize this year was given. In form a novel, the work actually constitutes a review of Poland's history since her partition at the close of the 18th Century.

Author Reymont, one of the dozen children of poor parents, grew up under the hardships to which so many Slavic writers have been heirs. Early expelled from school for refusing to abandon his native language for the Russian, he tried variously to make a livelihood-as store clerk, telegraph operator, actor, rail employe, farm hand, Paulist novice. He wrote his first short story, The Death, in 1894. He is now working on a cycle of six novels, of which one will have its setting in the U. S., whither he came in 1919 to study the life of Polish peasants who had emigrated.

The Nobel Prize brought Author Reymont about $40,000.

Winners of Nobel Prizes in Litera

James Branch Cabell
Fine Words Concerning His
Charm

James Branch Cabell is one of the many young gentlemen who have chosen to write an early autobiography perhaps autobiographically inclined narrative were a better expression. Mr. Cabell's Straws and Prayerbooks is a book which admirers of Mr. Cabell will find admirable and most of the others will find dull. The author of Jurgen I have never met, although I have several times met his delightful wife. In Richmond, one hears much of this local hero, who is from a long line of Virginians. His loyal friends attest his charm. He is visited by such literary figures as Hergesheimer, Van Vechten, Elinor Wylie. They return with fine words concerning his charm. As a writer, I find him positively the hero of the U. S. undergraduate of the intellectual type. His books I admire for their grace and elaborate technique; but all this is a prelude to the statement that, for the most part, I find his writings dull, and I seem to be fairly alone in this opinion.

From The Literary Spotlight I quote a description:

"Cabell is a man of medium height, and of a somewhat stocky figure. His head is finely molded with the broad forehead of the esthete and the thinker, not unlike that of the young Augustus; his eyes are heavy-lidded and sleepy, such eyes as one often sees in old portraits of the cavaliers and courtiers of the time of the Stuarts, rather insolent and a little bored; his mouth is delicately cut and sensitive, generous yet not too full, the mouth of a poet but not of a philosopher; and between those eyes and this mouth he has a quizzical little snout."

Cabell was born at Richmond in 1879 and has lived there most of his life. He was graduated from William and Mary College in 1898. has taught French and Greek and has a hobby for studying and writing about genealogical subjects. This is shown forth in the publication of such efforts as Branchiana, Branch of Abingdon, The Majors and Their Marriages, etc., etc.

Whatever else he may be, he occupies a lonely and a wistful place in American letters. The age of chivalry is not with us; and he writes beautifully and grotesquely of some chivalric code manufactured by himself in his mystical land of Poictesme. As he himself is withdrawn from people, so his books are withdrawn from life, and yet all the time his pretty visions are punctuated by shafts of irony.

J. F.

*STRAWS AND PRAYERBOOKS-James Branch Cabell McBride ($2.50).

ART

Americana

"In contradiction of a belief, still fairly current, that any creditable assemblage of early American art is impossible, this exhibition is presented. . . ." Thus, at the opening of the new American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, spoke Robert W. De Forest, President of the Museum, donor of the addition. A notable gathering listened, among them Lawyer Elihu Root, who also spoke. Said he: "We have here a chronicle of American history, more profound and more legible than any that the pen has ever created, for here is the concrete record that our forbears have left, not merely of their deeds, but of their way of thought, in the walls that housed them, the atmospheres that colored their lives . . . from the lowceilinged room of the 17th Century ... to the ballroom where Washington danced and the fine rooms of the early 19th Century." Wandering through the passages of that new wing, members of the notable gathering saw what Lawyer Root meant. There were many rooms, built in older decades for homes, set up again for History.

A room from the house of one John Hewlett, gentleman, who lived on Long Island in the early 17th Century. This Hewlett, since he had a word to say from time to time to a secret friend or a smuggler maybe, furnished his library with a little stairway to the cellar behind a sliding panel, by which means he managed his affairs quite neatly and kept mud from the hall carpet.

A room from the house of a Newport merchant of the mid-18th Century. There stands the desk at which, glowering and growling, he read the Stamp Act; and having read, called for his boots, drank a stirrupcup, rode off to New York to protest against it.

A room from a tavern in Alexandria, Va., in which Washington attended his last birthday ball, in which Lafayette, that gallant soldier, was dined by old comrades at arms with great ceremony in 1824.

Two rooms from Haverhill, Mass., furnished in that suave and hardy decorum that obtained when shipowners sat smoking in them, seeing in smoke their clippers beat round the Horn, their East Indiamen, under a cloudy tower of sail, treading the huddle of the seas.

Other rooms there are, innumerable; also many rare and valuable pieces of Colonial art. First among

these was a painting, said to be the oldest existing U. S. portrait. It shows the countenance of Jacobus Gerritsen Striker, chief burgomaster of New Amsterdam during the governorship of Peter Stuyvesant, painted by himself. In velvet jacket, linen collar, with a three-bottle flush that time cannot temper nor death dismay,

Paul Thompson

CHILDE HASSAM

He expressed great surprise

(See below)

he stares out, that burgomaster, at the intrusion of the centuries.

Hassam's Amaze

The National Academy of Design, Manhattan, opened its winter exhibit, awarded prizes. Many a struggling young artist awoke, dumbfounded, to find himself knighted with a check. Among the rewarded was a famed artist whose youth and struggles have long been at an end-Childe Hassam, famed New England impressionist. Yet he, too, was dumbfounded. Receiving the Altman Prize, carrying with it $1,000, for his portrait Miss Ingram, he is said to have expressed great surprise, remarking that he thought he had already won every prize possible for the Academy to give.

Quite explicable is Mr. Hassam's amaze at this last straw dropped so courteously on his already prodigious load of honors. The present portrait, painted several years ago, previously won the Philadelphia Art Club Gold Medal, though it has never before been exhibited in Manhattan. His pictures hang in over 20 museums. In 1920 alone, he received 25 important medals. Among his best-known pictures are: Church at Old Lyme, Isles of Shoals, June Idylle, A Rainy Night, Gloucester Harbor.

EDUCATION

Week

By proclamation of the President Nov. 17 and the six days immediately thereafter were observed as America Education Week. U. S. citizen throughout the land, especially paren and schoolteachers, bore in mind official program arranged for them by the Bureau of Education (adjunct of the U. S. Department of the Interior) associated with the American Legion and the National Education Association.

The Bureau's brochure recommended that the seven days be called:

1) Constitution Day-"Bulwark of Democracy and Happiness." On this day it was recommended that the fol lowing points be made by speechmakers: "Life, liberty, justice, security and op portunity," "One Constitution, one Union, one Flag, one History." Slogans suggested: "Ballots, not bullets," "Master the English language," "Visit the schools today."

2) Patriotism Day-"The United States Flag is the Living Symbol of the Ideals and Institutions of Our Republic." Points: "The red flag means death, destruction, poverty, starvation, disease, anarchy and dictatorship," "Stamp out revolutionary radicalism," "To vote is the primary duty of every patriot." Slogans: "America first," "The red flag-danger," "Visit the schools today."

3) School and Teacher Day-"The Guiding Influence of Future America." Points: "The necessity of schools," "The teacher as a nation builder," "School needs in the community." Slogans: "Better trained and better paid teachers," "Schools are the Nation's greatest asset," "Visit the schools today."

4) Illiteracy Day-"Informed Intelligence is the Foundation of Representative Government." Points: "Illiteracy is a menace to our Nation," "Illiteracy creates misunderstanding." Slogans: "No illiteracy by 1930," "Education is a godly nation's greatest need," "The dictionary is the beacon light to understanding," "Visit the schools today."

5) Physical Education Day-"Playgrounds and Athletic Fields Mean a Strong, Healthy Nation." Points: "A playground for every child," "Physical education and health habits for all." "Safety education saves life." Slogans: "A sick body makes a sick mind." "Athletes all," "Visit the schools today."

6) Community Day-"Service to the Community, State and Nation is the First Duty of Every Citizen." Points: "Equality of opportunity," "Better rural schools," "Good roads build a community." Slogans: "Get acquainted with your neighbor," "A square deal for the country boy and girl," "Children to

y, citizens tomorrow."

7) God and Country Day-"Reion, Morality and Education are ecessary for Good Government." int for sermons: "Education in the me, school, church." Slogan: "A dly nation cannot fail."

an

The President issued two proclamams—one anticipative, one celebrative. id the second: "An educated fool is sorry spectacle, but he is not nearly · dangerous to society as a rich fool. 'e want neither in this country. We ant the educated to know how to work id the rich to know how to think." Not all U. S. citizens observed Eduition Week. The National League of Women Voters, for example, ounced that it would refrain from articipation in Days 1 and 2 on acount of the campaigns against Comunism and Radicalism called for by he program; also, on account of a feelng the League entertained against the dea of the American Legion participatng in the program and being referred o as the proper supply body for Eduation Week speakers. Declaring that the program savored too much of militarism, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom like. wise abstained-from the entire week's activities. Likewise, the American Civil Liberties Union. Likewise, the Young Women's Christian Association.

Unsavoury

Parental eyebrows went up, concern was felt, when a committee, composed of faculty and undergraduate members of six universities and colleges in greater Boston, published a report on living conditions in the students' area of Back Bay. Said the investigators:

"It is a well-known fact . . . that the living conditions are far from what the faculties of the schools and parents of the students would have them if they were aware. .

"Young men and young women are, through force of circumstances, living with less protection from moral temptation than is desirable. It is known that, in some places where men and women students live in the same house, there is very lax supervision and that the frequenting of one another's rooms, both during day and night, is not at all unheard of."

Charges of mixed apartment parties, with gambling and drinking, were made. Charges of club dances, with "very considerable" amounts of drinking. Charges of robing and disrobing before unshaded windows.

"It is maintained by some girl students that they cannot pass through certain of our streets without being accosted by men."

The investigators, who represented Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Northeastern University, Tufts College and Emerson College of Oratory, recom

mended greater restraint and vigilance by the college authorities, stricter rules, appointment of "personal directors," a ban on liquors at "social affairs" and "suitable sex lectures."

Said critics: "In a metropolitan student community, some such phenomena seem virtually inevitable even at this stage in the advancement of the race. One wonders, however, why bad taste must be given publicity beyond the sphere of its occurrence."

At Amherst

In tasseled cap and flowing gown, Amherst inducted her 9th President, Dr. George Daniel Olds. Not until the June Commencement will such a great day come again to town. Calvin Coolidge, '95, onetime pupil of President Olds, was among the eminent absent; but the eminent present were many. In the procession, on the platform: President Lowell of Harvard; President Garfield of Williams (Amherst's "mother" college); Presidents Neilson of Smith, Woolley of Mount Holyoke, Lewis of Massachusetts Agricultural College (all neighbors of Amherst); Dean Bouton of the College of Arts and Pure Science, New York University; U. S. Attorney General Stone; U. S. Senator-elect Gillett of Massachusetts; Governor Cox of Massachusetts; Chief Justice Rugg of the State Supreme Court.

Came also the Amherst trustees, headed by George A. Plimpton of Manhattan; came recipients of honorary degrees; came scores and scores of alumni. Came also spectators to see the Amherst-Williams football game. So many were they all that Pratt Gymnasium became, perforce, a cafeteria; the locker room, a kitchen; the squash courts, a dormitory.

Dr. Olds spoke on "The Making of a College," referring to ideal college trustees as "a spur rather than a curb."

Governor-Prof.

The Corporation of Yale University received and accepted the resignation of Dr. Hiram Bingham, Governor-elect of Connecticut, a member of Yale's History faculty. "The increasing burden of public duties," explained Dr. Bingham, thus referring, as Woodrow Wilson had once to refer at Princeton, to his election by the people of his state to the chair of Governor.

Revenge

At Baton Rouge, La., Louisiana State University upper classmen seized freshmen, sheared their locks from their polls. Infuriated, the freshmen raided Baton Rouge High School, seized students, seized lady teachers, dragged them forth to the school yard, sheared some of their locks from some of their polls, "to get even."

SCIENCE

Forearmed

Advance notice was given to the public of a total eclipse of the sun impending on the 24th of January next. Prof. Ernest W. Brown of Yale University, a gentleman who has spent many years of his life making exceedingly accurate tables of the moon's behavior so that phases of the moon can be predicted accurately years in advance, has been appointed by the American Astronomical Society as Chairman of a Committee to inform the public concerning the eclipse -a very necessary function because of the proclivity of the press to garble accounts of things scientific.

The unusual feature of the eclipse of 1925 is that it will be visible in an unusually populous portion of this continent. One or two eclipses occur annually*; but many take place in outof-the-way places; and one spot is not thrown twice in the shadow of a complete eclipse oftener than once in every few hundred years. The January eclipse will stretch over a region where none such has been seen in the memory of living man. Its narrow band of shadow will start at a point somewhat west of Duluth and stretch eastward, going out to sea across the southern shores of Connecticut.

The southern boundary of the eclipse will include Duluth (Minn.), Menominee and Frankfort (Mich.), London (Ont.), Dunkirk (N. Y.), Wilkes Barre (Pa.) and the northern part of Manhattan (so accurate can the prediction be made). Within the northern limit of the shadow will lie Manistique (Mich.), Toronto (Ont.), Auburn and Hudson (N. Y.), New Bedford (Mass.); while Syracuse (N. Y.), Springfield (Mass.) and Providence (R. I.) will be a mile or two outside of the totality band of the eclipse.

The duration of the total eclipse will be about two minutes, during which observatories will photograph the sun's corona and the moon. The hour of the phenomenon will be between 9 a. m. and 9:30 a. m., Eastern Standard Time.

The Eightieth Electron

Mercury, or quicksilver as it is sometimes called in the vulgar tongue, is a heavy metal with an unusually low melting point. On that account, it is in liquid form at ordinary temperatures; and its use is possible in thermometers for measuring most terrestrial temperatures. It is produced in five or six times the quantity of a metal like gold; but, because its uses, though unique, are limited, it usually sells for about $1 a

*The last total eclipse seen in this country took place in Southwestern California on Sept. 10, 1923.