I By Stewart Edward White N his three well-known novels, "Gold," "The Rose Dawn," and "The Gray Dawn," here issued in one handsome volume, Mr. White covers in glamourous fiction based on solid fact the romantic story of California from the gold rush of '49 and the days of the Vigilantes through the final breakup of the great Spanish ranches in the '90's. Mr. White's brilliant and stirring novels present the great dramatic episodes of California's early days of strife and the attainment of her marvelous prosperity. "GOLD" tells of the days of the Forty-niners, the epic of the gold fields, the humors and oddities of the life of miners and adventurers. The young Americans who seek El Dorado via Panama are typical. They helped make history, and they are figures in a romantic and exciting tale. "THE GRAY DAWN" deals with that stormy era when the honest men had to enforce rough-and-ready justice through the Vigilantes. Its heroine, Nan, was a true pioneer girl in strength of character, and her love story is delightful. "THE ROSE DAWN" tells of the days when the adventurers turned from gold to land. Then came the new prosperity. Every Californian and every visitor to California must enjoy these three novels. They mingle fiction and history. "Mr. White," says a reviewer, "has reproduced the excitement, the humor, the strange happenings of that era, with color and truth." Samuel Hopkins Adams puts Stewart Edward White "in a class by himself as an historical novelist of American life. For combination of research and pictorial presentation-the quality that brings the past to life before one--I don't think of any present American writer worthy to sit beside him." "The book is remarkable," says the New York "Times," "for its vivid creation of a vanished phase of California's history. The characters are many, diverse, alive, and the various episodes, such as the big fire and the firemen's ball, are ably depicted." And The Outlook says: "The author is an adept in mingling history and fiction in gripping fashion." "Not only a new American novel, but a real American novel," says the Boston "Transcript.' une, "A rattling good story," says the New York "Herald Trib," "well calculated to hold the reader's attention from start to finish. . . . The author gives a most spirited picture of the land boom, when they sold climate and scenery and found there was enough of a supply to break the market. The tricks by which the auctioneers sought to attract purchasers; the frantic bidding as the boom reached its heights; the sudden ominous slump in the market; the final return of the disillusioned speculators to earth and work and sanity, all these processes are described with remarkable vigor." This absorbing and important book contains 1,201 pages in all. It is handsomely bound in sea-green cloth, and printed in large, clear type on thin opaque paper. This is a volume not merely for immediate pleasure, but of permanent value for any home library. Send coupon today, or mail a post-card. 1 MASEFIELD A Great Poet by Virtue of a Great Soul T HE tumult and the shouting dies, the critics and their bards depart; John Masefield remains, one of the few who carry on the high tradition of English poetry, a great poet by virtue of a great soul. In these books, says Arthur Guiterman, there is nothing weak or petty. We have the lyric vigor and rude mirth of the early "SaltWater Ballads," with the sailor's yearning for the sea and the loveliness of tall ships; the plays and the tragic poems, with their deep feeling for struggling humanity; "Reynard the Fox," with its rich Chaucerian pictures of the English countryside; the later sonnets, with their definite philosophy and melodious charm; and always the understanding sympathy that drives out hatred and the passionate devotion of the seeker for That one beauty God put me here to find. Great poetry is essential truth revealed in beauty; and poetry is not an exercise for the neurotic, the lazy, or the mentally deficient. The mind of a true poet should be as logical as that of a mathematician and as clean, vigorous, and well trained as the body of an athlete; his observation and insight should be as unerring as that of a scientist; and his utterance, with all its graces of diction, should be as clear as that of a mountaineer or a wise child. The great poet, like the great scientist, deals not in "common sense," but in that uncommon sense which may become the common sense of a better day. By these tests and more, John Masefield is surely of the elect. The Red Leather Pocket Edition of John Masefield's poems, in eight pocket-sized volumes, will be a priceless acquisition for any home library. This set is a fine example of the book-maker's art, bound in genuine red leather with gold stamping and gold tops. The paper is of fine texture, the type beautifully clear and legible. It is truly a de luxe edition. This set will be sent you without obligation for free examination on receipt of the coupon. You examine it at our risk. If you decide to buy it, you do so under the easy conditions of payment explained in the coupon. Act today, before our limited supply of this edition is exhausted. Use the coupon, or mail a post-card. THE OUTLOOK COMPANY, Book Division, 120 East 16th Street, New York. Please send me the Red Leather Pocket Edition of John Masefield's Collected Within five Poems in eight volumes. days I will send you $1 as my first payment, and $2 a month thereafter for six months. Or, if not satisfied, I will return the books at your expense and owe you nothing. $12.50 cash. For the Man Who Says: "I Have No Time to Read!" Chosen for You T HE first aim in compiling these books was to bring together a collection of essays and stories which would give pleasure. To be sure this is a collection of classics and there are represented in its pages the world's greatest writers, from the Greeks and the Romans down to our own time. But there are light as well as serious things to be found here; little essays that may be read in an otherwise unoccupied five minutes, and long stories or essays that will occupy an evening and that will send the reader in search of other books. Undoubtedly the reader who will gain most from this collection is he who has never acquired or has lost the habit of reading, most likely because, as he would say, "I have no time to read." some Well, he probably finds time to read the So newspapers and magazines. surely he can find time to read some of the shorter things reprinted in these volumes. And he may do so knowing that he is reading something upon which the best judges have set their approval. For after all that is what a classic is: it is simply a piece of literature which has stood the test of generation after generation of readers. Possibly some of the classics that we read in school bored us because we regarded them as school tasks, or because we were not in sympathy with them. But we should remember that they were not written as school tasks or for use in schools: they were written by men who were interested in what they wrote about and wanted to interest other people. The reader who is prejudiced against the classics I would advise to read this library backward. Let him first read some of the absorbing fiction of our own time that is here reprinted. And let him remember that these books are meant to appeal to every taste. We would not expect the young man who may enjoy Hazlitt's account of a fight or some of the short stories of de Maupassant, Poe, or Hawthorne, here reprinted, to read with equal excitement Plutarch's essay on the happy relations of husband and wife. But on the other hand the reader who is married will be surprised to find that Plutarch knew some of the problems of married life and can discuss them just as helpfully as Dr. Frank Crane or any of the innumerable ladies who run columns of advice on the subject in the daily press. The primary aim of these books is to provide pleasure. But not pleasure alone. For there is a sort of pleasure that is like a drug: it kills time for us, it gives us some excitement for the moment and that is all. Afterwards we are as bored as before; we have "put in" some time in this or that form of excitement, of dreaming, of forgetting our troubles but afterwards nothing remains to us. What permanent gain can the reader ascribe, for instance, to having some weeks or months ago, read a cheap mystery story or seen a poor play? Everything in these volumes will throw some new light on human nature, will give the reader a new idea, which will live and grow in his mind, will give him a new point of view in regard to this or that, will stimulate him into independent thought or teach him to see more in life and in common things than he has seen before. In these books he will have had his momentary pleasure as he read. He will have passed away an hour or an evening pleasantly. But at the end of that hour or that evening he will be a little wiser, a little more tolerant, a little better educated than he was before. LLEWELLYN JONES, FREE EXAMINATION This is one set of books that no intelligent family can afford not to own. It is a selection of the greatest short stories of the greatest writers of all time. Its editor is Llewellyn Jones, Literary Editor of the Chicago Evening "Post" and former Extension Lecturer in English at the University of Indiana. Send your coupon to-day for this exciting and illuminating set of books. Mail a post-card if you prefer. It is impossible for the average person to read all /P. O. |