On the same subject, Scribners might bring to light something that Stevenson had written to a young friend about to take his first lesson in skating, reading as follows: "To know the secret of skating is, indeed, I have always thought, the beginning of winter-long pleasance. It comes as sweet deliverance from the tedium of indoor isolation and brings exhilaration, now with a swift glide to the right, now with a deft swerve to the left, now with a deep breath of healthy air, now with a long exhalation of ozone, which the lungs, like greedy misers, have cast aside after draining it of its treasure. But it is not health that we love nor exhilaration that we seek, though we may think so; our design and our sufficient reward is to verify our own existence, say what you will. "And so, my dear young friend, I would say to you: Open up your heart; sing as you skate; sing inharmoniously if you will, but sing! A man may skate with all the skill in the world; he may glide forward with incredible deftness and curve backward with divine grace, and yet if he be not master of his emotions as well as of his feet, I would say--and here Fate steps in--that he has failed." * * * * * There is, of course, plenty of good advice in the Stevenson book. But it is much better as pure reading matter than as advice to the young idea or even the middle-aged idea. It may have been all right for Stevenson to "play the sedulous ape" and consciously imitate the style of Hazlitt, Lamb, Montaigne and the rest, but if the rest of us were to try it there would result a terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors, all playing the sedulous ape and all looking the part. On the whole, the Stevenson book makes good reading and Miss Klickmann gives good advice. LVIII "THE EFFECTIVE SPEAKING VOICE" Joseph A. Mosher begins his book on "The Effective Speaking Voice" by saying: "Among the many developments of the great war was a widespread activity in public speaking." Mr. Mosher, to adopt a technical term of elocution, has said a mouthful. Whatever else the war did for us, it raised overnight an army of public speakers among the civilian population, many of whom seem not yet to have received their discharge. It is the aim of Mr. Mosher's book to keep this Landwehr in fighting trim and aid in recruiting its ranks, possibly against the next war. Until every nation on earth has subjected its public speakers to a devastating operation on the larynx no true disarmament can be said to have taken place. * * * * *