New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

CREOLE SKETCHES--Lafcadio Hearn-- Houghton ($2.00). In this collection of early notes about New Orleans, lovely, sleepy "City of Dreams," are frequent bits of that exquisite phrasing and wayward charm for which Hearn was later famed. The sketches appeared in The New Orleans Item when the unkempt, erratic and friendless young genius was eking out his early years doing hack newspaper work and living on the "ultra-canal" side of the city. There are vivid, shimmering bits of description and portraiture, some humorous, some elusively lovely and redolent of the quaint, exotic charm of the picturesque old city.

THE TREASURE OF Ho--L. Adams Beck--Dodd, Mead ($2.00). Tucked in between covers of Chinese blue, with unruffled Chinese cranes strutting on them, is an absorbing tale of jade, dragons, chop suey, hidden shrines, legendary treasure, lotus flowers, all served up with an authentic Oriental flavor. It is the story of one John Mallerdean, in the Peking Customs Service, whose great-great uncle first got a foot in China's open door by curing the Emperor Chienlung of his gout and temper. A most provocative mixture of fact and fancy, some at least of Mallerdean's adventures in the "lost Buddhist temple beyond the Western Hills" have a basis of historical truth, vouched for by the author's intimate knowledge of his locale.

Joseph Hergesheimer