After reading _The Financier_ and running far into the interminable pages of _The Titan_ I felt that in the absence of cameras, kodaks, Baedekers, and historians Dreiser would be worth while. His endless reels of pictorial facts did not impress me as possessing sufficient animation successfully to compete with these odd rivals, but I admired his consistent sincerity and simplicity and felt that something important was promised by the mere unfinishedness of his pictures. I was sure that he did not write as one inspired, and certainly not as one fired. And after finishing _The Titan_ I felt that here was a work having the aspects of a seriously performed duty, exacted by fidelity to some personal theory of industrial change. I could not imagine the author happy as an artist is happy in his creative work; he was too conscious of service to a cause. But in the last paragraph I discovered a big, personal note which introduced an attitude that extends beyond the borders of materialism. It presented another Dreiser--an author who was much more than a cinematograph, snapping superficial impressions of a vast panorama. Two years ago I should not have attributed the following words to Theodore Dreiser: In a mulch of darkness is bedded the roots of endless sorrows--and of endless joys. Canst thou fix thine eye on the morning? Be glad. And if in the ultimate it blind thee, be glad also! Thou hast lived. After laboring through arid deserts of description, this memorable passage, fraught with recognition, satisfaction, challenge, hope, and promise, stands out as an oasis. _The Titan_, by virtue of its bold, graphic strokes, loses its identity as a tree, with sharply defined individual characters, and represents the forest. It is more like a jungle, and the jungle is our national life, into which the morning sun inevitably will shine. --DeWitt C. Wing. THE REVOLT OF THE "ONCE BORN" _Challenge_, by Louis Untermeyer. [The Century Company, New York] There has recently appeared a volume of verse by Louis Untermeyer which is an excellent example of the determinedly young and eupeptic philosophy so prevalent today--the philosophy of revolt. The book is named _Challenge_ and as challenge it must be considered. To be sure it is rhymed, but the fact seems quite incidental. To rhyme a polemic does not make it poetry, and one feels sure that Mr. Untermeyer is more proud of the spiritual attitude than of the artistry.