Blackwell Family, GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Garrison, William L., Jr. Blackwell, Alice Stone WILLIAM L. GARRISON, Jr. 60 STATE STREET BOSTON October 23, 1929 Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Monadnock Street, Uphams Corner, Mass. Dear Miss Blackwell : I fear that I have never expressed to you in any adequate way my appreciation of your gift of the volume of Latin-American poetry which you translated and published. It goes without saying that it was a workmanlike and scholarly performance on your part and I marvel at your ability to find the time to undertake so comprehensive and exacting a task. What an indefatigable worker and artist you have always been! Your achievement as a journalist and authoress makes my thirty years of buying and selling investment securities seem like so much treading of water. You must admit the fitness of my simile in relation to the operations that take place along our great financial thorough- fares. I will send you in a few days a copy of some of the verses that I have recently been concocting. Yours very sincerely, William L. Garrison Jr. September 20, 1929 926 DAVENPORT IA. TIMES NEW BOOKS AT THE LIBRARY The following new books have been received at the Davenport public library , and will be ready for circulation Saturday: Bailis- The place of Jesus Christ in modern Christianity. The author is professor of systematic theology in Emmanuel college, University of Tor- onto. Blackwell - Some Spanish-American poets. A collection of poetry by poets from Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Venezuela and other countries. Carr- "Let us give thanks," prayers for the home, the school and the church. re, Washington, D.C, ARMY WORM AND ARMY WORM MOTH They are here shown about twice their natural size. spongy as to soak up water is described in Popular Me (Chicago, July). We read in this magazine: "Imagine a substance so hard that it will turn a lathe tool, and yet so porous that it will soak up oil like a sponge, and you have a fair idea of a brand-new metal that has been perfected in the laboratories of the General Motors corporation and will soon be found in many installations that have heretofore lent themselves only with difficulty to efficient lubrication. In composition it is a copper-tin bronze in which graphite has been incorporated. Thousands of tiny pores, uniformly distributed throughout the structure of the metal, give it the absorptive qualities of a blotter. The quantity of oil the metal will absorb amounts to 25 per cent. of its own mass, and a peculiar feature is that the oil does not drain out again but is held no matter how dry the surface may be wiped. The metal is designed for bear- ings in the generators and starting motors of automobiles, in laundry machinery, where the leakage of alkaline water makes lubrication a difficult problem, as well as in installations where thorough lubrication is required on account of heavy loads and high speeds, or both."This clipping from Lexington, KY. Herald Oct 6 1929 Some Spanish American Poets- Translated by Alice Stone Blackwell. D. Appleton and Company. Price $3. This collection of Spanish-American poetry is translated with much feeling by Miss Blackwell, and each is accompanied by the original so the student of Spanish may see how genuine a service has been done by her appreciation and faithful work. Most of the poems are translated for the first time and North America has in them another vision of the treasure of South America, treasure that she may share without loss. Each of the South American states has contributed to this treasure and one finds enough of the work of each poet to gain a knowl- edge of his style for this is no vol- ume of vagrant verse and as there is no other collection amounting to anything like a full anthology one can realize the value to the student of Spanish thought and poetical expression through the trans- lator is modest enough to admit. "They are no doubt full of imperfections" in translation one finds that they have most graceufl form and much that is sheer beauty. "Speak not a word of wild, plaspheming giref! Be proud, be brave, though fallen in the strife, And gaze, O poet, with supreme disdain On all the dark injustices of life! —begins the translation of that noble poem of Manuel Guier er Najera of whom Mexico is justly proud, and again— "Gather the flowers, while there are flowers to pluck; Forgive the roses for their thorny guise! Our sorrows also pass away and fly, Flitting like swarms of dark-winged butterflies." Exquisite as these lines are in the original it would be grave loss if one must be denied their charm because of the misfortune of indifferent knowledge of Spanish. From Peru the translator has gleaned about twenty poems of their Jose' Santos Chocano as well as other poets—enough to give understanding of the wealth of poetic fire that is here. The Spanish countries have usually given all honor to their poets, and one finds majesty in the tone of those bestowing their gifts of verse that breathes this assurance. Every poem does not admit metrical translation, but there is much woven into graceful English verse as well as literal translation that can only be conveyed in majestic prose or blank verse. The work is true gift to the English pupil of Spanish literature as well as those who may find its beauty only through translation pies, as 'it would fit nowhere else.' It is seven feet wide and thirteen feet high. "It represents Lady Astor being presented to Commons by Lord Balfour (on her right) and the former Premier Lloyd George (on her left). In the background—so far in the background, some of the picture's critics point out, that it looks THIS CLIPPING FROM BELLEFONTAINE, OHIO EXAMINER JAN 20 1930 ESSAY CONTEST PLANS. Increased interest is being manifest by the club women of the city who are affiliated with the City Federation of Women's Clubs in the Pan-American essay contest for which prizes will be awarded at the State convention in Columbus, April 22 to 25. The contest closes Feb. 22. The subjects for the essays are as follows: "The Interdependence of the Nations in the Western Hemispheres," "Purposes and Achievements of the Pan-American Union," "Outlook for Inter-American Trade Relations," "Early and Modern Education in Latin America," and "High Lights of Spanish-American Literature." The following publications may be loaned from the Pan-American Union, Washington, D. C., to those entering the contest: "Educational Year book of the International Institute of Teachers' College," Columbia University, N. Y.; "The Influence of the New Schools in Latin America and Progressive Education," by Heloise Brainard; "Latin American Libraries," Bulletin, 1928; "Education of Women in Latin America," Mary Wilhelm Williams; "American Nation Series," pamphlets of each of the Latin-American countries giving a survey of education; "Rainbow Countries of Central America," Wallace Thompson; "Latin America and the United States," Graham Stuart; "Latin America, its rise and Prigress," F. Garcia Calderon; "The Republics of Latin America," History, Government and Economic Conditions, Herman G. James and Perry A. Martin. Contestants may write to the National League of Women Voters, 1015 Grand Central Terminal Building, New York City, for a "kit" containing the Pan-American Treaties of 1929, questions and answers of Pan-American famous radio speeches by prominent men and suggestions for study. (25 cents.) Books available -at the Ohio State Library: "The Future of South America," Roger Brabson; "South America," James Bryce; "Understanding South America," Clayton Sedgwick Cooper; "Central America and Its Problems," Frederick Palmer; "Studies in Spanish American Literature," Isaac Goldberg; "Commerce of South America," Clarence F. Jones; "The Central Americans," Arthur Ruhl; "The Literary History of South America," Alfred Coester. Other interesting books about South America are "South America Looks at United States," Clarence B. Haring; "Brazilian Tales," Isaac Goldberg; "The Stone Desert," Hugo Wast (Argentine); "Short Stories of Peru," Richard Palmo; "Cannan," Grace Arnha; "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder; "El Supremo," Edward Lucas White, and "Some Spanish American Poets," translated by Alice Stone Blackwell. [*Open Forum, Los Angeles, Cal.*] [*Aug. 2, 1936.*] Poets of the South SOME SPANISH-AMERICAN POETS. Translated by Alice Stone Blackwell, introduction by Isaac Goldberg. Appleton and Company, New York. If one is to understand the spirit of South America, penetrate the subtle sensibilities of the national soul of the various countries and sense the majesty of the scenery of the Southern Continent, he may do so by reading "Some Spanish-American Poets." The original text of each poem and the translation are given on opposite pages. While the reader is constantly tempted to shift to the music of the original language, the translations, nevertheless, are marked by a faithfulness to the text that does not suffer through lack of freedom of expression and brilliance of imagery. Indeed the reader feels thankful for the simplicity which pervades every line of the translation, its freedom from obvious striving for effect. Whether one understands the Spanish or not the translation reflects the spirit of simple people who love poetry and live with is as part of the rhythm of life. Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and other countries are represented in this anthology and the poems and poets have been selected with evident desire to give a rounded perspective pf the creative powers of our neighbors to the south. Miss Blackwell in bringing the message of the poets of the South to us has revealed a new source of beauty to the English speaking world and has opened a new vista through which is revealed the life of a continent pregnant with a new civilization. CAROL ARONOVICI. latest advices show that the picture will not hang in the place assigned it. In one quarter it is pointed out that Lady Astor, while the first woman to vote in Parliament was not the first to be elected thereto. The Countess Markieviez was elected by the Sinn Fein party o fIreland, but of course never took her seat. Not all comment on the picture is unfavorable, however, as will be seen by this in the London Daily Telegraph: "There is in the natural man a strong impulse to object to any work of art which commemorates an event of historical importance. But little statuary, but few pictures, designed as records of real persons or actual incidents escape criticism, and the criticism is apt to be most severe from those whose interest in art is small. An adequate reason for this common human weakness would be hard to find, but probably it is encouraged by a more or less conscious distrust of art and artists and a reluctance to admit the importance of events in which one has borne no part. We impute no motives, but for the noise which has been made about the hanging on the Grand Committee staircase of a picture of Lady Astor's introduction to the House of Commons some such explanation is to be preferred. In WILLIAM L. GARRISON, Jr. 60 State Street Boston November 26, 1923 Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Monadnock Street Boston 25, Mass. Dear Miss Blackwell: I want to thank you for your letter of November 23rd. Speaking as a trustee of the philanthropic funds with which I have to do, I feel that there could be no more logical direction for the income to go than the one that I suggested. You are, as I see it, the visible embodiment of the Woman's Suffrage cause, its ore authentic voice and the guardian of its central tradition. The present political strivings by suffragists impress me as being largely a mere beating of the air excepting in so far as some helpful civic education may possibly be evoked. To devote the funds to political effort would seem, therefore, to be far less intelligent than to place the income where it assists individual effort along lines of sound education and popular enlightenment. The income of these funds, alas, is very small and I presume that I should in no formal way pledge them in advance. At the present moment, however, I conceive my duty to lie in the direction that I have indicated and I take pleasure in enclosing a check to your order for $100. This comes from a fund of which I am the sole trustee. I will have a suitable paper drawn so that you may duly resign your trusteeship of the Church Trust which will put me in a position to use my discretion as to the disposition of the income from that fund in due course. Very sincerely, [Signature] William L. Garrison [Two clippings follow| UNITY God is Great! God is One! This is the cry of the desert and the solitude. It is a gift to mankind from the Semitic peoples, whose home is, the desert and whose pathway is across the trackless hills and under the midnight stars. The faith of the earliest Semitic Prophet became in the course of ages the conquering faith of Islam. It carries with it a trumpet call. It is the belief stronger than death, in the Divine Unity, the Tauhid, God is One. . . . Yet the heart of India has declared from an immemorial age: "God is One, the Advaitam, the One without a Second. Manifold indeed is He, of countless forms and myriad names, yet ever Undivided. Infinite is He and Endless, yet ever the Same, ever the One. God is One. . . . Thus, from age to age, the genius of India has been unifying the religious within her own border and leading forward to the higher synthesis of the whole spiritual life of mankind. When all the present political and economic struggles are ended, this will be remembered as India's greatest gift to mankind. --C. F. Andrews. [?] Habla Vd. Espanol? Then Come Right In Speak Spanish Is Among House Rules of Fraternity at University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis., Sept. 24 (Special Correspondence) --A fraternity house where only Spanish is spoken was opened at the University of Wisconsin this fall. It is named "la Casa Cervantes" to symbolize all of the Spanish-speaking countries in the name of the great Spanish author. Fifteen young women occupy the house, and dining room service is maintained for 35 men and women who are students of the Spanish language and literature. Senora Eugenia Galvan de Alfau, recently of Madrid, will be in charge and will be assisted by two Chilean senoritas, Elisa Curtis and Olga Rios. The house will become, its sponsors say, the center of campus life which concerns Spanish and Latin- American interests. From time to time, concerts, festivals, lectures and receptions will be held and a traveling scholarship for Spain or South America will be established. Several Spanish artists have offered to contribute paintings and other forms of decorative art, and several Spanish-American friends of the project have given books and objects of art, including the Spanish ministries of state and public instruction; Juan C. Cebrian, a San Francisco engineer; Mrs. Susan Huntington Vernon, formerly President of the University of Porto Rico; the heirs of the late Lucius Fairchild, formerly American Ambassador to Span; and Archer Milton Huntington, president of the Hispanic Society of America. More than 1500 students at the university elect courses in Spanish literature and language. Monitor Sept. 26 1923 April 10 1924 The Christian Register 341 A Revealing Letter from Theodore Parker Saturday Night, Dec. 6, 1857. My dear Howe, What you said to me the other night-that I lacked religion (at least) in its lower forms, and that you did not attend my services because my preaching was not religious enough-moved me a good deal, and has led me not a little to look out upon my life and in upon myself. Events of the last ten years have done something, perhaps, to take down, in some measure, the vanity and self-conceit which belongs to men in general. I do not think very highly of my services, estimating them either religiously or intellectually. I am only surprised that any considerable body of person should look to me as a help in their religious culture. Nobody, I think, wonders so much as I at the faces of the audience before me on Sunday ; most of the persons who attend the Melodeon. I suppose, come for some religious, moral, or intellectual purpose. Nobody comes for fashion, for respectability : it is unfashionable, it is disrespectable, to be there, or to be a friend or even an acquaintance of mine. All this I know better than any one, and have proofs enough of it thrown in my face so often that I have no room or time to doubt the fact, so I wonder all the more that so many look to me for religious help. The audience I speak to is composed mainly of persons from that class of men least under the influence of aesthetic considerations, or of mere social conventions, and most under the influence of moral and religious principles and sentiments. In addressing these persons, some of them men and women of eminent attainments in morals and religion, I am deeply conscious of my own religious deficiencies and would often gladly sit as a learner where I stand as a teacher. I don't know ; perhaps you were more right in your remarks than in your letter since. But I think my lack is more in the higher than in the lower form of religion. I mean I do more justice to my own idea of religion in the lower form of manifestation- i.e., by devotion, by oral prayer, etc.-than in the higher form-by living a manly life in obedience to all the laws of my nature. As an internal emotion, religion is love of God and trust in God. Analytically, it is love of truth, love of justice, love of men, love of holiness, for there are successively the intellectual, moral, affectional, and pneumatic elements thereof. Synthetically it is love of God and trust in Him with the mind and conscience, the heart and soul. This I call piety- not agpaiety. To most of our reading the... Now if there is anything strong in my character, it is this very love of God and trust in God. Pardon me for what I have written and yet shall write. It may seem folly to you-perhaps even vanity. But I can write what I should not like to say : my love of God and my trust in God never fail me ; I don't mean to say that I follow either out to their consequences,-there I fail continually,-but on the internal feeling I never fail. I have taken more pains with the culture of piety than with any other part of my consciousness. It has given me more joy, more silent and unseen delight, than all other things in my life. Now it is my chief joy in life ; my chief support in trouble ; my only source of hope for mankind. If I have any branch, any little twig, of strength, it has grown out of this stock of piety. I delight in nature, in letters, in science, in philosophy ; I have a dear delight in the few friends I have left ; but my delight in God-it swallows up all the rest. I could almost do without all the rest ; without that-not a moment. In respect of this I was well born. My mother was a woman was a woman of poetical nature (she had a nice texture of brain, as you and Mann would say), a woman of rare piety ; piety that was beautiful as it was strong, unobtrusive yet perpetual, a stream that sung in low sweet music as it went through the common pasture which is watered and made green, fringing itself with flowers as it passed on. She took great pains with my religious culture. She had a dim idea that I was to be a prominent man-in her mind a great one-and took pains to lay the foundation of the character I was to build upon the Rock of Ages. She was forty-seven years old when I was born, I was the last of eleven children. She died when I was twelve, but left a religious impression that will never wear out. She left her mark on both sides of me. She was descended from a family of French Huguenots that came here after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled on the frontier, and were dreadfully harassed by the Indians. On the other side, my forebears were Scotch Covenanters and English Puritans. Few men have had so good a religious training as I. My consciousness of God, my experience of religion, began very early. I remember well the dreadful battle I fought with the devil of the Westminster Catechism before I was seven years old. I learned it at school. At that time I threw fear of God, fear of the devil, fear of hell, overboard, and have had no fear of God since then. But it was a stout battle in my little soul before nature could make away with this fear. I was a shy boy and did not tell my mother my fears, but looked them grimly in the face and put them down, all alone. I often had cried myself with the fear of damnation and the horror of the God of the Westminster Catechism. After that, I had a great delight in prayer. It was a boy's prayer first-prayer for special things ; and then poor and little ; then a man's communion with his Maker. I remember one fine day-I was not seven then-offering a sacrifice to God. I gathered some wild geraniums and blue-eyed grass-then my favorite flowers, and ever since invested with a strange sense of religious romance-and with solemn prayers laid "them up before the Lord." on a great rock sheltered by a tree, as a sign of my devotion and gratitude and self-consecration. I hated theological books, the works of Baxter and Edwards and the like ; religious books I loved. I was brought up on the Bible and the Greek and Roman classics (at first in translations, but I learned Latin and Greek early and well). The great joy of my later childhood, of my youth and manhood, was prayer-silent, often without words, with only thoughts, resolutions, nay, only gratitude and love and trust. Had I temptations- that helped keep me safe between the flesh within and the world without ; had I sorrows-that comforted me ; had I sins-I took them along with me in my prayer, and in my communion with God gathered strength, from the reserved power within me, to forgive myself and cover up my old transgressions with new and green and flowery life. I had always my favorite places for prayer, where alone I might commune with my own heart and be still. Wer nicht sein Brod mit Thränen ass Wer nicht in kummervollen Nächten Am seinem Lage weinend sass ;- Er kennt sie nicht- ihr himmlische Machte, says somebody-and truly. When I went to a new place I stole aside from the rest to find an unseen place wherein to orient myself before my God. Now when I go to pass a few weeks anywhere, the first place I seek out is a spot for prayer. The little part of the world I have been in, from the Mediterranean to Lake Erie, is thus dotted all over with my Horebs and Sinais, with Zions and Gethsemanes. But all this will be only tiresome to you. Suffice it to say I have failed in all things which I proposed as the temporal object of my life and am still a happy man ; I am happy through my love of God and trust in Him. I have met with sorrows which boy the earthly man together till he can in no wise lift up himself, and though something grim from the battle of life, I am yet serene and happy in the quiet delights which are above the reach of accident. It is religion which makes me thus happy. By nature I am