John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, 1879. He graduated from Columbia University, receiving his A.M. in 1901 and Ph.D. in 1903. He has taught English since 1903, first at Amherst College, and (beginning in 1909) at Columbia. Although most of Erskine’s works have been performed in the capacity of editor and essayist, he has written two volumes of excellent verse. _Actæon and Other Poems_ (1906) is little more than an introduction to _The Shadowed Hour_ (1917), which contains such keen verses as “Satan” and “Ash-Wednesday” in which philosophy and poetry are interknit. DEDICATION When imperturbable the gentle moon Glides above war and onslaught through the night, When the sun burns magnificent at noon On hate contriving horror by its light, When man, for whom the stars were and the skies, Turns beast to rend his fellow, fang and hoof Shall we not think, with what ironic eyes Nature must look on us and stand aloof? But not alone the sun, the moon, the stars, Shining unharmed above man’s folly move; For us three beacons kindle one another Which waver not with any wind of wars: We love our children still, still them we love Who gave us birth, and still we love each other. _James Branch Cabell_ James Branch Cabell was born at Richmond, Virginia, April 14, 1879. He taught French and Greek for two years at William and Mary College (1896-7), worked in the pressroom of the Richmond _Times_ (1898), was on the staff of the New York _Herald_ (1899-1901) and began contributing to the magazines in 1902, writing over sixty short stories as well as scattered essays, translations and papers on historical and biographical subjects. Although Cabell likes to describe himself as a genealogist, he is the author of some of the most exquisite prose in contemporary literature. But it is a prose that rises high above its own beauty of style. In books like _The Certain Hour_ (1916), _The Cream of the Jest_ (1917), _Jurgen_ (1919) and the poetry-crammed “comedy of appearances,” _Figures of Earth_ (1921), the composite Cabell hero emerges, triumphant in the midst of his defeats—the eternally disillusioned, eternally hopeful Jurgen-Charteris-Kennaston: a symbol of the human soul seeking some sort of finality, some assurance in a world of illimitable perplexities.