I enjoy André Gide. And he lacks sense of form which belongs to Frenchmen. Few have written better of Verlaine. His _Les Nourritures Terrestres_ contained lines I liked. Once in a while there flashes from his pages, a touch of the fine prose of France. _Nene_ which won a _Prix Goncourt_, is finely simple, without pose. It is sincere. The rejuvenating breath of fields is in this story of peasant life. Perhaps that is what French prose must do, like the giant in the fable of antiquity, go back to the soil, in order to leap up renewed, strengthened. The descriptions of nature have an unsought charm: _Le soir tombait, un soir d’octobre_.... Evening fell, an evening of October, lovely as an evening of summer, but holding keener, more grievous beauty, something more intimate that makes the soul shiver. It has the poignancy, poetry I recall in early peasant scenes by Cazin, the same glory of yellowing fields; the same sadly serene peace of the sky. _El Encanto de Buenos Aires_, by Gomez Carillo, is attractive. He is the Spanish Loti. Not so wonderful as master of words, of course, but worth consideration. He was one of that band of brilliant Spaniards who helped Rubén Darío edit _Mundial_, in Paris, the lamented Amado Nervo being of the number. The book is well printed, pleasing typographically. Carillo, like Loti, loves the souls of far cities. He says in the introduction: ... _mi alma siente la gracia de ciertas ciudades con una intensidad que los grandes ministros y los grandes periodistos desdeñan_. Like Loti, he is a stylist, if not such a commanding one. I have followed him in various quarters of the globe. One I recall happily, is Egypt. He says he likes to watch resplendent stars he has never seen, rise from the lonely depths of oceans. Sometimes he forgets and becomes sentimental. It is easy to forgive, because so many times he forgets and then becomes artist. He has more than a little of Loti’s distinguished manner. He has sympathy, too! His impression of New York pleases me. By New York I suppose he means America in general. The educated Spaniard, as a rule, keeps fine disdain of us, what he terms _those new uncultivated people_, up north, _known as Americans_. Hear him: _La vida ahi es un vertigo, y el hombre un iluminado o un automata, una maquina, o un delirio. De arte, de gusto, de armonia, de medida, de distincion, ni siquiera una idea tiene la metropoli norte americana en su existio callejero._ There is some truth in this!