Antaeus Attested

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS-- Maxwell Struthers Burt--Scribner ($2). That this novel was still possible in the U. S. is a matter for great thanksgiving. It is a book about the "great open spaces" by an enlightened man. A strong, silent rancher marries a virtuous Manhattan chorus girl, loses her for a while, fights predatory waterpower interests, tries city life, goes back at last to the cows, mountains, little grey home and prospective patter of tiny feet. But with what a difference are these properties handled by a man who writes with a mind instead of a sack of mush! Instead of lollipops we get literature. For pap is substituted philosophy of a distinctly austere variety.

The love story, in the first place, becomes a delicate, powerful study in reticences. Charm conquers incredibility when, on 24 hours' notice, Mercedes Garcia of polyglot Pennsylvania origin marries Stephen Londreth, rancher-runaway from Philadelphia's aristocracy. The continental poetry of Wyoming, in the second place, emerges with clarity and sublimity; from the grave, racy, accurate talk of cowmen about their animals, to the ineffable silence of mountain ranges. The serious thesis, finally, that men are better outdoors than in; that the Antaeus myth is sober truth; that cities bury their builders' souls, is argued with a militance amply justified by the writer's competence. Few of his countrymen are as civilized as Author Burt.

This is a book of many pages, beautifully written; of many people clearly seen and steadily sustained; of many places viewed broadly and with insight--Paris, the Riviera, Washington, D. C., besides Wyoming, Philadelphia and the theatres, studios, dance halls, hotels and philosophers' retreats of Manhattan. There are quaint minutiae--a sneeze in China as the possible origin of a Manhattanite's cold. There is no end of masticable thought and sharp aphorism; that civilization's aim is "to think like an angel but to function like a man"; that sexuality is either splendid or ugly, never funny or pretty, and that a man must contemplate the body of a woman closely and often if he is to preserve an image of their love; that an old waiter's face is finer than that of the average bishop ("It's a question of faithful service") ; that Washington is the "Tibet of democracy"; that understanding, humility and fortitude are the only virtues ("to be kind when you don't want to").

Philadelphians will be vexed if it is true that they have "the acme of wealth and no illumination." But Author Burt has already revealed similar truths about New York in The Interpreter's House (1924). Having renounced Philadelphia with all other cities, soon after his graduation from Princeton (1904), Author Burt often visits cities, knows them thoroughly; but his Wyoming ranch has been his home. There he has produced, besides beef and horses, short stories and poetry of high literary merit and quiet wisdom. Lately he bought an estate in South Carolina but it was to the Tetons of Wyoming that he returned when his old friend and professor, Dr. Henry van Dyke, asked for a book about mountains.