Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

72 came off the stage. The maid then retired. Now was my chance ! I filled my cigarette case. But I don't mean that. Now was my chance for detecting Mabel's literary lapses. I took a crafty slant at the little pile of volumes on a table. These are precisely what I sherlocked : "The Wisdom of the Chinese" — Confucius, Lao-Tzn. Mincius, Yang-Chu, and other sages. "The Psychology of Dress." by Frank Alvah Parsons. "Memoirs of My Dead Life," by George Moore. Poems of Arthur Symons. "The Chinese Nightingale," by Vachel Lindsay. Then Mabel pranced in. wearing a comedy suit and a hat that looked like a cherry fhp. . . , , I slyly engaged her in a discussion of books, never hinting that the evidence would be held against her intel What They Read Helen Jerome Edd\ favorites include "Alice in Wonderland"' and translations of Chinese poetry lect. "Have you read George jean Nathan's •A Book Without a Name ?' " demanded Mabel turning the tables of inquisition. "I'm crazy about Nathan. "Do vou like Freud?" Zena Keefe takes her reading no more seriously than the average flapper, as the accompanying box of chocolates attests. she continued before I could get my breath. I shook my head and mumbled something unintelligent about "The Interpretation of Dreams." "No wonder," said Mabel sympathetically. "You started all wrong. I'll send you the book to start with." She made a jotting in her omnipresent notebook. "You'll want 'The Hand of the Potter,' too. and 'Painted Veils,' by James Huneker." She made another short-handed flourish. Had I read Sara Teasdale's "Love Songs?" No? Another jotting. Of course I must read George Moore. Some of him was superb, and some not so good. When Mabel finished with me Tfound I'd subscribed to a year's extension course iterature. On the list were George Jean Nathan, Theodore Dreiser. Arthur Symons, Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, Freud, Hamsun, Mary Roberts Rinehart. Remain Rolland, Cabell, George Ade, Conrad And there were others, but I can't remember them. "When do you get time to read ?" I demanded. "Every night before I go to sleep," said Mabel. Thereupon I vowed I was old enough to cut out "Now I Lay Me" and substitute "Thus Spake Zarathu,stra." My next stop was Mary Miles M inter's set. Mary had sailed for Europe, but her press agent was sunning himself under the glass top. I asked Mary's literary diet. "Shakespeare," he said, and I fled. Poor Shakeni, he isn't half as bad as i he's read. The other day I picked up one of those parlor-plush copies of "Selected Poems," and started reading aimlessly. I was struck with the beauty and truth of what I was reading. Surely this was not Ella Wheeler Wilcox, nor yet Michael Strange. Some one new ! I'd made a discovery. I turned to find the author's name — William Shakespeare. No doubt I'd read the words of that sonnet in the classroom, but I'd been so busy looking for the hidden meaning, the moral, and the strophes that I'd missed the sense. With Mabel's list as a flowerpot of hope, I decided that after all there were things suitable for your fall reading aside from "Agamemnon." Anita Stewart's mother quite shamelessly revealed her daughter's literary addiction. Mark Twain and Longfellow, she said, had been indulged in heavily. Anita even stoops to George Eliot. Jeffrey Farnol, Eugene Sue, and Leonard Merrick. I was surprised to learn that she took surreptitious slants at Daisy Ashford. I didn't approve of that, and ^^^^^ told her mother so. But I