90,000 scientific books, which is open to the public, as well as for reference by the Museum staff.

An elaborate organization is maintained to coördinate museum and school studies, both by work in the museum and through extramural activities. The N. W. Harris Public School Extension of the Museum circulates 1,000 travelling exhibits among all the public schools of Chicago, and to many other institutions. The James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Public School and Children's Lecture Division of the Museum sends lecturers with slides and films out to the schools to address classrooms and assemblies, and provides several series of educational moving pictures for children, given each year in the James Simpson Theatre of the Museum.

Several courses of illustrated science and travel lectures for adults are also given at the Museum each year. The Museum staff produces many important scientific reports, treatises and other publications each year, which are printed by the Museum press, and given wide circulation throughout the world.

Each year the Museum has expeditions at work in many far corners of the world, seeking old and new treasures for all the departments of the institution. The extent of these activities may be grasped by noting that in 1926 the Museum had sixteen expeditions operating, and in 1927 there were fourteen. Several are now at work, and others are in contemplation for later in 1928. Expeditions in the last two years, to mention only a few, have ranged from Labrador and Baffin Land to Madagascar, from Alaska to Abyssinia, and from Mesopotamia to South America.

THESE THINGS SHALL STAY

BY HAL SAUNDERS WHITE

SOME things there are which change not-
As green leaves in Spring

And running water;

The beach in waiting silence fraught With songs the salt winds bring

With strange sea laughter murmuring Till they have taught her

Their shifting songs to sing;

At drowsy summer window ledges
Fingered winds that press and pass
And trample soft-foot through the hedges
Or poise a-tip-toe in the grass
Swaying along the pathway's edges;

The wet wind's breath on a gray beech bole;

The flash of sun on a swallow's wing;

The riot in a robin's soul

When love of earth has made him sing
At the middle moment of the dawn
Before day comes and the night is gone.

Song and love and wind and rain
Have been, are, will be again. .

Behind the wind's swift changes,
And the green leaf's growing,
A deathless spirit ranges
Beautiful past knowing

By day and by night.
Roof-trees may fall

And granite moulder, Old love take flight

And new love grow older.

These things shall stay,

None of these all

Shall pass away.

PALPITATING WOODPULP

BY SAMUEL GRAFTON

GREATER far than the triumph of Ford in the automobile game, greater far than the triumph of Standard Oil in the lubricating business, greater far than the success of the motion picture, greater, I say, than all of these, is the triumph of literature in America. There are persons who can still remember the time when earnest dreamers declared that the solution of all ills lay in the education of the masses. Be that as it may, it is certain that the solution of one set of ills was accomplished with the education of the aforementioned multitudes-the ills which used to beset the purses of the authors, in days gone by. For the nation has learned to read, and those who read must have that which can be read, and those who write-well, they have seen their duty and have done it nobly.

I

There has always existed the thing called popular fiction. It was known to us in an aggravated form as long ago as the time of the lamented Mrs. Aphra Behn, and even as far behind that estimable scrivener as the most careful of researchers would care to research. But it never, perhaps because of the mercy of Providence, has been so acutely present as it is now. It used to hide itself, to assume the outward appearance of modesty and shyness, and there surrounded it a general aura of unworthiness. People read it, of course, but they never gloated over the fact.

Now all that is changed. Popular fiction, being popular, must be good, by the fine rule which makes democracies out of mobs; and he who denies that it is good is branding himself as somewhat more than merely peculiar. But it is not only upon this peculiar bit of reasoning a priori that its goodness depends. Popular fiction, in this day and age, is good because it is well written, because it stirs the emotions it starts out to stir, because it fits the

need it is designed to fit as smoothly as a good silk stocking fits a shapely shank, and because, lastly, it makes people sit up and beg for more.

I am not concerned with that hybrid kind of popular fiction which wavers between art and amusement, the sort turned out by novelists who usually are referred to as the Dean of American this-and-that, the kind of stuff which can be read in public by the most hardened of expressionists without serious damage to his reputation. Material of that nature is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring, though it manages to combine the characteristics of all these things very ingeniously. I am absorbed in the contemplation of an art which is just what it is and no more, an art which suffers from nothing so little as it suffers from the attempt at concealment. I am speaking, in short, of the literature which frankly exploits the interests which the psychologists have shown to exist beneath the smooth dome of the Average 'Omo, an art which aims to please rather than instruct, and to stupefy rather than enlighten.

What is the Average 'Omo interested in? Primarily, money. All right; but he spends all day in attending to that particular interest, and so we must determine what comes next. The answer is not singular but plural, and the items rush out upon each other's heels. We may catalogue them conveniently, thus: (a) adventure, (b) love, (c) filth and (d) truth. Not every member of the species Average 'Omo (if you have not guessed it by this time, the apostrophe stands for H) is interested in the same assortment of the points so listed. The finest members are, but of that, more anon. Some care only for adventure, with its various subheadings, war, the West, mystery, and so on. Others are born with a predilection for the gentler passion, so to speak, and still others care for nothing so much as for filth. Those who avow a love for truth might be supposed, on purely speculative grounds, to be the least in numbers. That is by no means the case, for figures show that their number is many-legioned, and that they are the most faithful supporters of those who bring to them the brand of truth which they find best suited to their liking. Being certain of the things the average man wanted, the scribblers of the day have given them to him, and, if we were

facetiously inclined, we might add, and how! They have supplied him with adventure and love and truth and filth. They have brought him the mystic glamor of the cruel East, the deepdyed villainies of the sophisticated West, the true stories of the greatest of sinners, the passions of the most enthusiastic of lovers, and the experiences of the most. . . . But the only category remaining is filth, and so we apply the soft pedal.

They have printed the verbal responses to these innermost desires, and they purvey them daily upon the public streets, made glorious with color and expert lithography. The seekers after adventure need no longer, now, gird themselves with trusty swords and hie them to distant shores in search of the bright eyes of danger. Those who would pay homage to Venus need not encumber themselves with perfumes and ointments and wend them to the habitat of the lovely. The many who seek the glorious light of truth may safely refrain from casting themselves apart from mankind in chilly hermitages and unheated tubs. And those who would smack the sensuous lip in vicarious vice may do so in their own homes. For the adventure magazine is here, specialized, as all good things must be in this day and age; the love story periodical has reared its Titian head (Titian makes a brave show); the confession journal will give the truth, pure, unadulterated, and bleeding, so that all may read and run-to buy and read again; and, lastly, the sloppy story, filthy story, and dirty story magazines will provide the owners of the hitherto mentioned sensual lips with what to be sensual about.

Notice the genius back of the specialization. It serves a double purpose, of course. Those who want the one kind of stimulation, and the one kind only, need not be hampered from buying by the presence of the other kinds between the same covers, and those who want more than one sort-may buy more than one magazine. The idea is simple, like all great discoveries, but it has led to the building of vast fortunes. For understand that no publisher publishes but one kind of magazine. There are dozens of houses in the game, and each of them furnishes a complete assortment, with combination subscriptions, if wanted, supplying everything from love to mystery. Thus we have humanity catalogued, apparently, but not entirely, unwittingly.