ADVOCATE TERMED GOOD, BUT NOT DISTINGUISHED

The following review of the current issue of the Advocate, which appears on the stands today, was written especially for the Crimson by Edward Hungerford, Tutor in the Division of Modern Languages.

It would save you time to read the Christmas Advocate rather than its review. You could glance through the magazine in a dozen minutes, and read it all in three quarters of an hour, and if you read the review I shall insist that you read the Advocate afterwards at least Mr. Dumaux's story. Truly a Christmas number, there is a thorough treatment of the holiday from the gently falling snow flakes sort of thing to the realistic modern. And there are also the usual number of varied essays, verses, reviews and editorials. A good number, but not distinguished.

Father and Sons Discussed

Mr. M. A. DeWolf Howe contributes a short essay concerning fathers and sons, and the obligations of each to the other. He pictures a father who wisely questions the values of an older and of a newer generation. Mr. Pluribus asks whether, after all, there is not "something in the realistic attitude of youth at the present moment--the attitude of facing facts without blinking--which argues well for the future?" Yet he finds that not all of the wisdom is to be from the youngsters; that the father who "looks for honor in these days has a full half of the burden of the Fifth Commandment laid squarely on his own shoulders." He must teach and teach faithfully lest the younger world forget.

Perhaps the strangest of all gifts of three night wanderers to a child born on a Christmas Eve, are the cup, the pipe, and the kiss of "The Three Wise Men", by Jean Dumaux. Perhaps the strangest of all tellings of the old story, very gently, very gravely, very beautifully! Tramps in the night, a lonely barn, a refuge, a man and "the skirt", and a new born babe! Of these the story that every one knows is told, the story that every one knows by heart and in his heart.

For a very short story Mr. J. E. Barnett's "Fern Seed" possesses a degree of intensity that is admirable. Perhaps one does not understand the meaning of all the apparitions that came to Karl as he waited at the cross-roads "over both of which corpses have been borne to the burial-ground", but the retribution was Karl's secret, not ours. Mr. Barnett writes with a hint of magic. With Mr. Dumaux he should share honors.

Ghost Story is and Isn't

A ghost story that is, and isn't, is cast into a novel frame by Mr. Robert Pope in "The House of the Two Colonels". The story itself is too familiar in its general outlines to be entirely successful, and too unimportant to deserve much praise. Nevertheless, there is a moment of suspense that is worth reading for; that is, if you are not tired of haunted houses, and you ought never to be.

"Soloman Tinker's Christmas Eve", by Mr. Walter D. Edmonds Jr., beguiles us by promising two highwaymen, a bar maid, and a bar, old style. To be sure the story begins with one Judd, a coal barge owner, but nothing comes of that since we hear nothing of coal barges and little of Judd. After we get into the story we find our highwaymen. Gentleman Jo has shot the stage coach guard in the belly. It was certainly in the belly because there are five references to Gentleman Jo's custom of shooting only at the belly. Gentleman Jo, is not the Jeffrey Farnol or the Alfred Noyes sort of highwayman, as the bar maid had hoped, because but read the story for yourself. I might spoil it for you, hard Dixon should be read twice.

Mr. Eduardo Andrade writes a Paris letter, after the fashion of The Dial's correspondents. This, I believe, is an innovation for The Advocate