Various

“ We have not the slightest conception of what we believe. We may have learned to think with reasonable clarity, and our ideals may be rather high, but we have built up no scheme of life, nothing by which to live. Any philosophy or creed which we may possess is, at best, vague, inchoate, and fragmentary. ”

“ I suppose my wish is ludicrous, for does not Abbé Pierre himself say that “Americans always seem to think that unless one is bustling about all the time one is doing nothing”? And then he immediately adds: “Some of the best deeds that I have ever done have been the thoughts I have lived through in this same old garden by the white road, where wooden shoes go up and down”. He who can appreciate such a philosophy will read “Abbé Pierre” with much interest and delight. ”

“ In fine, there is an overflowing measure of all that one could look for, from the faint breath of old church and family scandals up to the rousing melodrama of Cooper’s long and triumphant legal campaign against newspapers. And there is a great deal more for which one would never think to look, grateful as one is to find it. ”

“ For those who feel that a religious philosophy is an essential basis from which other values must be derived, or for those whose religion is an untouched field of inherited beliefs and inhibitions, the time and the subject-matter of “Confessions of an Old Priest” are ripe. The Rev. Mr. McConnell remains in the end as devout a Christian as he was fifty years ago, when he entered the Church convinced that “it owed its origin to Jesus Christ, and that He was the unique Son of God”. ”

“ This, as I have said, is because we have never searched our souls with the cold, relentless light of reason in an attempt to understand every fiber of our make-up, we have taken things for granted, we have known only our exteriors, we have not known ourselves. ”

“ Consequently we [77] have been inclined to think of religion as little else but repression and that its followers knew nothing either of happiness or of life. They seemed to belong to a world apart—to a world that was drab and unreal. ”

“ We talk glibly of our traditions as something everlasting, and forget that most of them originated in the vague limbo of eighteen-ninety. We unconsciously consider the College of to-day to be the same as our fathers knew, and so it is astonishing to find in the musty pages of an old Lit. ”

“ We have not seen that these are in reality not fruits at all, but abortions, that although the church in its present form has outlived its usefulness, the spirit which exists in each one of us is as dominating now as it ever was, if only we will open our hearts to it. We have never stopped to think these questions through to their conclusion. We take untruths and half-truths for granted, and allow misconceptions to pass current without ever a sincere effort to get at the eternal strength of things. ”

“ Jesus himself preached a “workless” doctrine, a “toil not, nor spin” existence, a “turn the other cheek” attitude, and it is his biographers, together with such followers as Paul, who have incorporated Him into the practical philosophy and morality of the Church, to make Him the greatest exemplar in history of life as it should be lived. Jesus, and “Christlike” people are delightful, adorable characters, according to this book, but they are a care to the community, and should their ethics be generally adopted, civilization would go immediately more or less to smash. ”

“ In our four years we are continually passing through a series of changes—παντα ρει—everything is in a state of flux. Our ideas and ideals, our opinions and our minds are ever changing, developing, broadening. The Senior is the Freshman only in that he is the unifying body in which during the four-year span these many shifting thoughts have been welded together, and the instant has in truth been made eternity. For the Freshman is too engrossed with the business of becoming acclimatized, heeling [76] some publication or other activity, and making friends to have much time for anything else. ”

“ We have loathed the very sound of self-surrender because we have taken the word in its cold and literal sense, and have not understood that instead of sacrificing any trace of individuality in giving ourselves up to the spiritual and the ideal, we find instead a new fulness and depth to life. For self-surrender is actually a self-realization more compelling than our brightest dreams.
F. O. MATTHIESSEN.
[79]
Poems
I.
Sometimes you are younger than the dawn ”

“ For, in general, we have accepted our surroundings as a permanent matter of fact, and have not stopped to analyze just why they are as they are. Most of us hardly know the reason for our being here at all. ”

“ Lawrence loses interest in his major characters. He must be on to pastures new.
“Aaron’s Rod” can scarcely be called a “good” novel. It contains many advanced ideas in the field of sociology which we found rather difficult to agree with. However, the world may in time grow up to Mr. Lawrence and until then we should seize the opportunity of reading his descriptions of luxurious interiors, and the Alps. They are remarkably able bits of writing.
Mr. Lawrence is an important novelist now, but it is in his power to do much better things than he has done so far. ”

“ If he would lessen his tone of violent indignation, if he would tincture his spiritual realism a little less with impure physical realism, he might be considered one of the great novelists of our time. ”

“ We have not realized that instead of a mere question of surface like or dislike, it involves a tremendous tolerance and sympathy with all of mankind, and that although difficult, if not impossible, to attain in its fulness, it certainly is the antithesis of hypocritical. ”

“ We hear men talk of brotherly love and it seems to us a farce. How could anybody pretend to care for everyone equally, to put his closest friend and the man in the street in the same class? What could be more unnatural, more hypocritical? ”

“ Furthermore, such a background is ideal for the unfolding of the romance of Germaine Sance and the young American, David Ware.
In another respect the book is a picture of life viewed broadly and sympathetically. Abbé Pierre left his little Gascon village when he was quite young; he has given the best of his years and strength to the world; and now he returns to spend his last days in this place that he loves above all else. Here he sits in his garden house and writes down some thoughts and ideas about life born of many years of living. ”

“ A twilight shriven in its pain of dying;
Swiftly the wing-beats slanted earthward to
The darkening marshes, with a throat-soft crying.
Night crept through dusk, as now the old surprise
Crept through our kisses to the inner love,
An age-old wistfulness. Our pensive eyes
Yearned to the darkness and the veil thereof;
Yea, and our ears found sorrow in the cries
Of moor-fowls,—and the darkness wheeled above.
WINFIELD SHIRAS.
[101]
Book Reviews Abbé Pierre. By Jay William Hudson. (D. Appleton & Co.) “Abbé Pierre”, by Jay William Hudson, is altogether a delightful and charming book. ”

“ When he tells you that he is not sure that the outcome of the Civil War may not have been for the best and that he believes that Walt Whitman was the greatest American poet, you may be inclined to disagree, but you will be forced to admit that, as he himself would say, his reasons are reasonable. Nor does this [104] Englishman spare his own country in many of his comparisons. The book is not one to be read through in a sitting; it is something to be picked up and read one part at a time. ”

“ His impressions of the material and the abstract, of which we have formed no very definite opinion because of what might be called that contempt bred of familiarity, come to us as truths which are as worthy of our consideration as they merit the laughter of the foreigner. ”

“ THE YALE CO-OP.
A Story of Progress
At the close of the fiscal year, July, 1921, the total membership was 1187.
For the same period ending July, 1922, the membership was 1696.
On October 5th, 1922, or one week after the opening of college the membership was 1752, and men are still joining.
Why stay out when a membership will save you manifold times the cost of the fee.
THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE Contents DECEMBER, 1922
[75]
The Yale Literary Magazine
EDITORS
BUSINESS MANAGERS
Leader Here at Yale we are inclined to take things rather too much for granted. ”

“ Reduced Prices Range from $915 to $2190, f.o.b. Factory
Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper.
Edited by his grandson, James Fenimore Cooper.
This unique and fascinating collection of letters, written 1800-1851 by and to the first great American novelist and now authoritatively edited by the novelist’s grandson, is printed from originals in the possession of the Cooper family. As is well known, Cooper, during his last illness, forbade the publication of any biographical material about himself by his then living descendants ”