Ruminations

UNMAILED LETTERS--Joseph H. Odell--Dutton ($2.50). Joseph H. Odell, now head of great philanthropic interests in Delaware, identified with the DuPonts, wrote a number of intimate, introspective letters to his friends. Too shy to mail them, he has published them. Religion,/- the English countryside, literature and dreams, flowering Japan, Burmah, the East, are his themes.

"Life is like cards, only with this difference--everyone has to play several hands simultaneously." "After all, the old hymns are right, and life is a pilgrimage." "The English not only take their pleasure sadly, but they have even learned to take their sadness pleasantly." "Perhaps the only real failure is that implying waste."

/-His article "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself" in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1918, mercilessly excoriated U. S. clergymen for their supine neutrality during 1914-17.