of her finished work, -catching in brief disconnected notes the mood of a moment or a day, or throwing a flash of insight back to light the course of weary months; outlining in a bold sentence or two the stories she did write or might have written; rounding, in a phrase so right that it clutches you, the essential quality of a chance face or gesture through which can be glimpsed the whole drama of the random life behind it. And, as genius is only the apotheosis of the spark of creation in all of us, this revelation of the birth of art is both exciting and profound.

as

Katherine Mansfield's writing sprang, does all the purest quality of art, from the joy of comprehending the wholeness, the power, the eternity of life itself. She could not force this comprehension; she had to wait, clearing away the unessential, until in some beautiful moment, as clear and round as the crystal globes of her own best stories, understanding came. Then she was off glory, adventure, cleansing tragedy, and the cosmic mirth which is delight in the resilient victory of the spirit over the clumsy obstacles of circumstance.

'Now who is to decide,' she writes, "between "Let it be" and "Force it"? J. believes in the whip: he says his steed has plenty of strength, but it is idle and shies at such a journey in prospect. I feel, if mine does not gallop and dance at free will, I am not riding at all, but just swinging from its tail. . . .'

The agony lay in the waiting, knowing that beauty lay just around the corner, hidden by some obstacle which could not be passed or pierced until, in its time, understanding should melt away the dross and leave only the translucent understanding. Katherine Mansfield struggled under a weight of ill health which would have extinguished completely a less ardent spirit, yet it was not this adversary, but some dark conflict within herself, that cost her the bitter and often vain striving to write. In that writing, in the act of creation, her life existed, and in it only.

Would she have been less of an artist had her health permitted her to enter into the minor amusements and preoccupations of living, wherein her beauty, her wit, and her gayety would have served so well? She seems to have thought so. Or to have had the little house and garden she wanted, the child for whom she so longed? 'And I thought,' she wrote, 'if I had a child I would play with it now and lose myself in it and kiss it and make it laugh. And I'd use a child as my guard against my deepest feeling. . . . That's true, I think, of all, all women. And it accounts for the curious look of security that you see in young mothers: they are safe from any ultimate state of feeling because of the child in their arms.'

This entry comes in the early part of the journal, and I think that if she had come back to it toward the conclusion, seven years later, she might have changed it. Katherine Mansfield

wagered her all — her frail life — in an attempt to capture the wholeness of that ultimate feeling.

Before she entered on her last few months, at Fontainebleau, the journal stops with the words, 'All is well.' What that meant she did not live to say, perhaps even to know. But the flame of her gallant life was of the quality that must have meant the most intense art in living, though perhaps a different art, - however commonplace the external course of that life might have been.

MARY ROSS

My Heart and My Flesh, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. New York: The Viking Press. 1927. 12mo. viii+300 pp. $2.50.

ONE is frankly puzzled, in fact besieged by questions, in attempting an estimate of Elizabeth Madox Roberts's new book. Is there any relation whatever between the long Prologue and the story itself? Should one expect a relation? Has the author any singleness of purpose in the conception and execution of her story, and, if she has, has not the reader a right to expect some outward and visible sign of it? Are the frequent inclusions of a very ugly naturalism as intrusive and uncontributory as they seem, even upon a second reading? Must the voices which speak to Theodosia Bell, as she lies in bed from illness and starvation, own James Joyce as a father? Does the story as a whole somewhat sadly reflect the work and the points of view of contemporary writers rather than Miss Roberts's own attitude and her well-proved ability? Does the most dramatic scene in the story, the scene at the cabin of Theodosia's half sisters, the negresses Americy and Lethe, lose its art and its significance by a lack of motivation and an overdose of high tension? Is the conclusion, which is somewhat reminiscent of Sylvia Townsend Warner, credible in view of the preceding chapters? And, if credible, is it as unsatisfying as one is inclined to believe? And finally, ought all these queries to be shoved aside as upstarts in the face of much gracious writing and of flashes of beauty not unexcelled in The Time of Man?

Aye, there's the rub the mention of that earlier and lovelier book! Comparisons, odious as they are, are inevitable. The epic quality of The Time of Man, which lent to that story the exciting illusion that the book marched on in spite of its author, is entirely lacking in this new novel, which is episodic in the extreme. The circumstances, welcome or untoward, which at once dictated and made the life of Ellen Chesser and of her fellow wayfarers, had about them a simple inevitableness in contrast to which the succession of cataclysmic disasters in this new story seems quite alien and impossible even to Fate in its worst mood. The touches of so-called realism of the earlier story were natural and incidental, never disagreeable or unpleasing,

If it is true that all signs fail in dry weather, it is almost axiomatic that cheap money cancels many useful indicators in business and finance. In a great bull market in stocks, like that which is now in its fourth year, establishing new high average prices in the industrial stocks, at least, one of the most important considerations in these later stages is whether stocks 'carry themselves.' If, for instance, the dividend return, even at the high price paid, is generous enough to make it. possible to carry the stocks in bank loans with a margin tolerably assured, the actual level of prices becomes relatively unimportant. This is the condition to-day without sufficient exceptions to be worth considering.

To the experienced financial observer there is a danger here as well as an assurance of safety. It has been said with considerable truth that much of the buying of stocks, even at the top, has been for investment. A good deal depends upon the character of the investment. The Stock Exchange, for instance, has a tolerably correct line on the quantity of stocks carried in New York on margin by brokerage houses, and the amount of the banking accommodation which is secured by such stocks in loans. But banks all over the country, with money cheap and looking for borrowers, are glad enough to make loans, especially those callable without notice, on reputable Stock Exchange collateral, which means active common stocks as well as bonds. It is impossible to say how much borrowing of this kind has been done, but the position must be extended, and any general calling of loans arising out of some unforeseen development would

throw a sudden burden upon Wall Street. It is not difficult to see what would happen. The first measure of safety would be a vigorous liquidation in stocks. There is not much that Wall Street fails to foresee, and it is matter of record that when any great turn in business affairs occurs Wall Street is always thoroughly liquidated before the rest of the country. It might almost be said that this automatic-safetyvalve quality gives the financial centre its greatest moral value.

Every boom in business has its limit, while the tendency to overtrade and overexpand is an inseparable part of human nature itself. This is something no device can prevent, not even the almost incredible possibilities in credit expansion of our Federal Reserve System. I am not reviving here the somewhat exploded theory of business cycles. In a book published five years ago I pointed out that the old ten-year cycle made its last appearance in 1893, and that 1907, and even the liquidation of 1920, were out of all line with the financial panics of the past.

But this is not to say that prosperity and conservation will not alternate, and that the corrective of liquidation, more or less forced, will not be required from time to time. We are still a long way from the millennium. There is a cumulative effect of depressing influences which the country, at the time, has taken in its stride so far as business confidence is concerned. Wall Street does not deceive itself, and it is tolerably clear to those financial authorities whose very existence depends upon foresight that conditions to-day are decidedly spotty. All business is not good. Some industrial corporations are