Graft

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"

girl who was last in the row cast rather con

a little Red River town many persons gathered to see it land on the sand bar.

Near the edge of the crowd stood a black mammy and Uncle George, a little old darky with a fringe of white whiskers around his gentle, wrinkled face.

As the plane appeared in the distant sky Aunt Amelia rocked her huge body back and forth in true camp-meeting style and, beating her hands in time to her swaying, cried: "Thank de Lord! Thank de Lord!"

Uncle George gazed up in silence until the wonder came very near, then, raising his trembling hands devoutly, he exclaimed, "I's ninety years old and dat's de onliest piece of God's furniture I ebber see."

How She Helps Mamma

THE teacher at a certain private school strives to impress upon the plastic minds of her pupils a proper appreciation of filial solicitude. Recently she asked members of a class to tell in what ways they had been helping their mothers. The answers, given in rotation as the pupils were seated, related a wide range of little services, and the teacher was much pleased with the result of her gentle admonition. But she noticed that a little

they related their commonplace services, and when her turn came to answer, the eyes of the others were fixed on her, as she lives in an opulent home where a number of servants attend to the household routine.

"Well, Gracie," the teacher asked, "what have you been doing to help mamma?"

"Oh, lots of things!" was the reply. "But mostly I go to the Country Club and get cigarettes for her."

Distinctly Suspicious

A CAROLINA darky was lately accused

by a farmer of stealing a chicken. "See here, my man," said the employer of the accused, "are you quite certain that he shot your chicken? Will you swear to it?"

"I won't swear to it," said the farmer, "but I will say he's the man I suspect of doing it."

"That's not enough to convict a man," said the other. "What aroused your suspicions?"

"Well," said the farmer, "I saw him on my property with a gun; then I heard the gun go off; then I saw him putting the chicken into a bag; and it didn't seem sensible, somehow, to think that the bird committed suicide."

"Where have you been, Louise?" asked her mother. "And what are you eating?" "Cheese,” said the young lady, calmly. "Cheese? Where did you get it, dear?" "In the mousetrap."

"In the mousetrap!" exclaimed her mother, horrified. "But what will the mice do? They won't have any cheese."

"Oh, they don't care. There were two of them in the trap and they didn't mind a bit!"

Her skirt is bobbed to match her curtailed hair;

Across her brow a trimly scissored bang Lies plasterwise; her eyebrows, plucked with care,

Are arched like segments of a chocolate heart; Upon her cheeks red disks, from rougedaubed rag,

Proclaim the matchless candor of her art, Which found its model in the Nippon flag. In fearsome contrast are the lips and nose Of this much-tended face of eighteen years: Below, a flame; above, dense arctic snowsAnd yet no sign of natural thaw appears. Now that I've done this honest portrait of her, I wonder more than ever why I love her. BEN RAY REDMAN

Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and has also studied at the Sorbonne and Collège de France. She has engaged in social work and investigation in Boston and New York. She is the author of a volume, French Perspectives, which appeared during the war. David Seabury is an American painter who has lived much abroad. James Boyd-a name new to HARPER'S MAGAZINE is a young and promising writer of fiction. Margaret Widdemer has been frequently mentioned among the poet friends of the Magazine.

Stephen Leacock will be recalled as the author of "New Nonsense Novels" and other fiction which have established him as one of the most popular latter-day humorists. He has recently visited England, and the present contribution to the Magazine is to be followed by a humorous account of his trip, entitled, "The Discovery of England." Mr. Leacock feels that America, from Columbus down to H. G. Wells, has been too frequently "discovered" by visiting lecturers in quest of impressions, and that it is about time the current should set in the opposite direction. Accordingly, as a lecturer and gatherer of impressions himself, he has set out to "discover" England for the benefit of his fellow Americans.

Charles Hanson Towne, poet, essayist, and editor, is a frequent contributor to the leading magazines. V. H. Friedlaender is an English writer whose delightful stories of English life are coming to the fore in American magazines. Louise Driscoll is a writer of short stories, novelettes, and notable verse, as well as a lecturer on American poetry. Barbara Hollis, resident in Meriden, Connecticut, is a new contributor to the Magazine.

Herbert Adams Gibbons has been frequently mentioned in these pages in connection with the present series of articles on

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French ports and watering places, which have been strikingly supplemented by Mr. Aylward's beautiful drawings. Violet Alleyn Storey makes her first contribution to HARPER'S MAGAZINE. J. D. Beresford, the wellknown English novelist, has made some notable contributions to the popular literature on psychic phenomena, of which he has become a serious investigator. Carol Haynes is also the author of "On the Train" which appeared in the January Magazine.

Sheila Kaye-Smith is one of the most brilliant of the younger English storywriters and the author of several novels, among which Sussex Gorse is probably the best known. Another story ("The Mockbeggar") by Miss Kaye-Smith appeared in the February Magazine. W. H. Davies is introduced to our readers in the biographical note accompanying the group of poems which appear in this issue. Grace Irwin, who resides in Arlington, New Jersey, has already recorded some of her experiences with Italian schoolchildren in an article entitled, "Michaelangelo in Newark," which appeared in the September issue.

Laura Spencer Portor needs no introduction to HARPER readers, but the Editors take this opportunity to announce that Mrs. Portor has written for the Magazine two delightful articles descriptive of a sojourn which she made among the primitive people who live in the Kentucky hills. Viola I. Paradise has gone abroad to make a study of immigration in the countries from which it derives. An interesting article by Miss Paradise, which we can promise our readers, will have to do with those immigrants who have abandoned America in order to return to their native lands.

In this issue of the Magazine appears the opening installment of "The Journal of a Mud House"-a diary record of a unique summer spent in a unique way. Miss Sergeant's letter to the Editors, sent in advance of the "Journal" itself, is so interesting that we are reproducing it here. While it touches upon various matters which are dealt with in the "Journal," we believe our readers will welcome it as a sort of foreword to the articles themselves, casting intimate sidelights on the whole adventure.

TESUQUE, N. Μ.

Lest you imagine that I have lost myself on the high New Mexican mesas or found there no personages and events worth recording for HARPER'S MAGAZINE, I want to say that only excess of local color and material has prevented my sending you the four articles agreed upon before now. They are well under way.

In my own village I have attended a christening, followed by a dance when the host, a villainouslooking character with one eye (the other was torn out by the hand of his brother), read a proclamation, asking the men to put away their knives and pistols and drink no whisky. I saw no knives-but there was a fight over a girl at 2. A.M. when both knives and rocks were freely used. Even the children speak practically no English, and school is taught in Spanish in the country.

Perhaps you wonder more than ever why a lady who might live in France has chosen New Mexicobut I know very well and shall try to make it clear as the tale goes on. I have managed to keep a journal in the midst of my eight-hour work days, but there has been no time till the last two weeks to get it into shape. I am going off to-morrow on a six-day pack-trip into the high wild mountains with Miss Anna Mitchell (who made the retreat from Monastir and is therefore a very good sport) and a grand old Indian thief named Santiago, who is at this moment reclining on a sheep skin in my funny little stone house, smoking a cigarette and meditating on eternity. He has brought with him two of the most thin and miserable ponies I ever laid eyes on, and how we can put our stack of food and blankets on their backs is a problem reserved for mañana. When I get back from this trip I go for two or three days to visit the excavation near Zuni and stay at the archæologists' camp.

One has to take these excursions when they offer -but after that I shall stick to my desk and try to send you some good copy. If it isn't good it won't be the fault of New Mexico, where (as one of my artist friends said) one sees more color and forms in five minutes than in a lifetime in the East. The country has all come to me pictorially and humanly -through my eyes and through talk with my neighbors.

I am sorry to send you this letter in long hand, but the typewriter I should be using has never yet arrived from Chicago. My mail still goes to Santa Fé (coming out to me on a milk truck) and I now expect to be here till November at least. Very sincerely yours, ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT.

We are gratified to note the widespread recognition evoked by "The Marriage in Kairwan," which confirms the Editors' belief that in this story Wilbur Daniel Steele has achieved what is perhaps his finest effort in fiction. That he has absorbed much of the real spirit of the East and the psychology of its alien people is evidenced by the following comment from Abraham Mitrie Rihbany. The latter will be recalled as the author of a singularly penetrating paper on the contrasting cultures of the Orient and Occident, entitled, "Wise Men from the East and Wise Men from the West." He writes:

"The Marriage in Kairwan is a fine dash of literary genius. It also reveals Steele's insight into the life and language of that distant country. His transliteration of Arabic words is perfect.... Το me the story portrays the struggle of a divided soul and shows how the thin vencer of alien culture peels off by the strong influence of the home environment. I imagine that the ordinary reader will find it difficult to grasp the writer's real meaning. The brilliant high literary lights of the article and its swift movements-perhaps a little too swift for Kairwan-tend to (very pleasantly) bewilder the ordinary story reader. However, the literary world will add this production to its treasures.

The reference to "embroiderers" in the following letter from a Nebraska school teacher will be readily understood by that initiated and understanding class whose case was set forth with sprightly humor in a recent contribution to the Lion's Mouth, entitled "Embroiderers," by Frances Kelley

del Plaine.

DEAR HARPER'S, -How eagerly I look forward to a new copy of you, and how thoroughly I enjoy it entirely. I like, I love, I positively adore the Lion's Mouth, and after such elaborate and extravagant praise it is scarcely necessary to say that I "belong" to the "clan of embroiderers." At a recent discussion of a popular novel this trite and bromidic remark was made "Folks either do understand or they don't, and you can't help it either way." Yea, verily, but what untold vision of what untold beauties is given to those who see with the all-understanding eye. How I love them-those who work boldly in gay yarns and weave whole mantles for our delight and then those others who use fine and delicate silks in dainty patterns, and those very clever and happy folks who make for our admiration elaborate and complex bouquets in baskets and vases and still those others who embroider by the "cut out" or the appliqué design. A wonderful clan, -the password isn't, it just is.

Seriously, I feel that I must, to be quite fair, tell you how HARPER's is enjoyed by all of us. I use it quite constantly in my business-the teaching of English in the High School of this western town-and my second aim and ambition is to so love it myself that I shall make my love of it contagious and help these growing youngsters to an appreciation of The Things that Are.

We are glad to give place to the following

letter which Doctor Steinmetz's article on "Science and Religion" has evoked, since it opens up a train of speculative thought which many of our readers may be interested to pursue further.

DEAR HARPER'S, -The very able article by Dr. C. P. Steinmetz upon "Science and Religion," appearing in your February number, is extremely suggestive, and I believe will be greatly appreciated by religious thinkers inasmuch as it indicates a genuine interest of empirical science in religion-which is rare indeed. In this respect it is perhaps epoch making. That modern empiricism should deign to concern itself with religious problems at all is in itself a most striking fact.

I think, however, that some observations might be à propos, if you have a little space to spare. Does not the writer place too much emphasis upon the problem of immortality, as though religion were almost exclusively a matter of the persistence of consciousness after death? Or as though spirituality were a kind of experience transcending conditions of time and space? Now, in fact, religion is primarily and largely equivalent to the spiritual experiences of this life here and now, its peculiar potencies or instrumentalities functioning actually within space-time limitations. Consequently the existential limitations of scientific inquiry will not prohibit legitimate matter-of-fact investigation within the religious sphere so far as spiritual factors function now. It follows that apart from problems of immortality and life under forms of space and time relations different from those that obtain in human life on this earth, there is a large part of the spiritual domain whose elements may become valid objectives of scientific research. From findings made within this domain valuable inferences might be drawn in support of the mysteries of faith, provided science sets itself seriously to this task.

For instance, there is the dynamic quality of ideas which constrain the mind to think in terms of the God concept. Granting that this intellectual urge differs from physical or chemical energy and may not be properly formulated in terms of the brain mechanism, still it clearly remains an empirical fact that such ideas may be logically correlated with human experiences and actions so important for the welfare of human life as to warrant some concept of causation. Psychology is beset with this problem and, although it has not wholly succeeded in elucidating psycho-physical parallelism, still modern dynamic psychology has good practical grounds for becoming a genuine science. Human nature is quickened, inspired, pained, tormented, healed, consoled, and gladdened through ideas, the most influential of which is the conception of a personal goodness. Whence the origination of our notion of benevolent will which is the prime factor of spiritual experience? This is a problem of causation which science might well consider, in support of religious faith, without being asked to hunt back upon any trail other than that of phenomenal experiences of a spiritual kind.

If science is at present baffled with the nature of transcendent mind creative of its own kinds of time and space relations, let it study the manifestations of such mind under purely human con