Mr. Basil King Reviews Advocate

Whether by accident or intention, the Harvard Advocate makes Incident, as distinct from Episode, the special feature of its issue of December 5. The Incident may be compared to a detail in a design, capable of being sketched apart, but with a certain incompleteness; the Episode is rather a design in a series--a thing necessary to the perfection of the whole, and yet complete in itself even when detached. In at least three out of the four contributions to the current Advocate, in which Incident is the motive, the suspended interest is admirably maintained. Mr. Schenck's "Paper Chase" Mr. Tinckom Fernandez's "Necessary Child," and Mr. Morgan's "Hongkong to New York," alike leave us not only with a desire for more, but with a certain childish resentment against those authors for not telling us what "happened" afterwards. Mr. Millet's "Book Agent" is too incomplete even for an Incident. Something ought to "happen" in the very briefest sketch. While the American book peddler is described with an effective sense of fun, his Irish colleague is not convincing. We wonder if Mr. Millet ever saw an Irish book agent in actual life. Mr. Sheldon's contribution, "The Endless Journey," is in the nature of Episode, and displays happy gifts of insight, humor, and expression. His Cuban in Wisconsin, who "doan' work, but just goes by," is a new type of that Beloved Vagabond with whom our sophisticated generation has developed such an odd, and yet not wholly surprising sympathy. Mr. Stoddard's "Mine Own Familiar Friend" is in a kindly vein, though it might more appropriately be entitled, "Mine Own Chance Acquaintance." The quiet humor of Mr. Porter's paper, "On Music," will be appreciated by men who prefer their own efforts in art to those of others.

To many readers the most interesting as well as the most important article, in the issue will be Mr. Brawley's contribution to "Varied Outlooks." To see ourselves as others see is always profitable, but it becomes something more, when it is with the discriminating sympathetic perception which Mr. Brawley brings to bear on us and our institutions. We should be spared much of the criticism to which Harvard is treated throughout the land if more of our friends were to put themselves at Mr. Brawley's unprejudiced point of view.

The level of this number's poetry is considerably below that of its prose. "Explanations," by Mr.E.E. Hunt, and "Voices in the Fall," by Mr. Tinckom-Fernandez, are little more than experiments in versification. Mr. Husband's "Dry Northeaster" is a spirited bit of writing, marred by a lack of technique. "Aft" does not rhyme with "mast"; nor can an adjective conclude one line, while the noun it qualifies begins the next, as in the opening of the second stanza. In Mr. Biddle's "On the Bridge" it is probably a printer's error that gives "eye" as a rhyme to "skies." The little poem is not without a gentle charm, heightened by some felicities of expression especially in the closing lines.