ADVENTURES OF AMERICA, 1857-1900 By John A. Kouwenhoven
All right-minded people like picture-books, and Mr. Kouwenhoven has compiled an admirable one (Harper's, 125. 6d.) from the files of Harper's Weekly. Perhaps the very merits of Harper's Weekly lessen its interest for British readers, for the famous illustrated weekly was remarkably doctrinaire for a journal of its type. It was Republican and reformist, and, while that makes its appeal all the greater to American, it may diminish it for British readers, for whom, as the name of Boss Tweed means little, the art of Thomas Nast may not mean much. But in the main this is a most lively record of American (and modern) life. We have not only dramatic pictures of the Civil War, but pictures of the romantic days in the Wild West, when the buffalo was still darkening the prairie and the Indian was not a mere Hollywood prop. There are the usual comic contrasts of dress, the contrasts which, if they fail to chasten women, at least gratify the masculine observer's sense of superiority. There are the early Pullmans and the early bathing costumes that displayed such a decent regard for the modesty of mankind. There is a picture of a Yale prom long before the too-famous visit of Mrs. Dorothy Parker, the glories of Brooklyn bridge, and the horrors of the domestic architecture of the gilded age. The commentary is lively and intelligent. John Brown is treated a little too kindly, Sheridan a little too harshly; the statement that " the most powerful leaders in Congress would gladly have abetted " Lincoln's murder is going beyond even Mr. Eisenschiml's bold hypo- thesis. Among many treasures, one reader appreciated most highly the picture of the Stock Exchange in 1894, which shows us " Father " (Clarence Day, Senior) in a typical attitude.
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