The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE TANK least the most we can say is, “Finger of birth-strangled babe, Ditch-delivered by a drab,” the only decent ingredient in the cauldron of bourgeoisie gone mad. It is impossible to go into details with regard to this book. In every page Yvette Guilbert unconsciously reveals her unique greatness. Her brain is great enough to comprehend the minutiz of technique without in the smallest degree forgetting the fact that technique is absolutely worthless without genius. America is full of technicians, and I suspect that a number of geniuses are born. But the genius is strangled before he can acquire technique, and the technician unfortu- nately is not strangled at all. But any one who wants to do something worth doing and go to prison, should sleep with this book under his pillow, if he has a pillow. ALEISTER CROWLEY. Tue Boy Wyo Knew Wuar THE Birps Samp. By Papraic Corum. The Mac- millan Co. Price, $1.50. I THINK the grotesques of Dugald Stewart Walker are extremely charming. They go well with the subtle and tender genius of Padraic Colum. This is only a book for children. But thank God! there are some of us who are children still. This is only a book of fairy tales. But thank God! there are still some fairies. There are still a few people in the world who love beauty, and who are willing to fight for freedom. To read the newspapers, one would suppose that freedom was dead for ever. But with whatever bonds they will bind liberty, there will always be a few like Padraic Colum to keep Her torch alight. We may not be allowed to speak or write what we think, but life will always live in fairyland, and an hour cometh when the doors of fairyland will open, and the iron hero nursed on fairy milk will strike the tyrants dead. Axetster CROWLEY. GITANJALI AND Frurit-GaTHERING. By RaBinDRANATH TacorE. The Macmil- lan Co. Price, $2.50. Known that whatever is good in Rabindranath Tagore is due to the style of W. B. Yeats, I expected the introduction to be by that individual, who might have been romantic if he had been willing to wash his face and put on a clean collar every month or so. The introduction begins, “A few days ago I said to a dis- tinguished Bengali doctor of medicine, ‘I know no German.’” Apart from the question as to whether Silly Willy counts his fortune in marks or not, I was much distracted by his reference. I found myself back again in Teng-Yueh. We were sitting at dinner in the Consul’s house, when the messenger broke in to tell us that the Consul—who was away among some unruly tribes—was ill, perhaps dying. We jumped up, George Forrest, the botanist, and I, and made ready. We were delayed two hours in starting by the “distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine,” who needed to finish his rice. It was nine o’clock before we got off. It was a wild, windy night, 291