Cavalry, C. S. A.*

BEDFORD FORREST AND His CRITTER COMPANY--Andrew Nelson Lytle--Minton, Balch ($5)./-

Robert E. Lee's cavalry general was James Ewell Brown ("Jeb") Stuart, killed at Yellow Tavern in the last days of the war, but when somebody asked Lee at Appomattox who was the greatest soldier under his command, Lee answered, "A man I have never seen, sir. His name is Forrest."

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-77) was no flower of Southern chivalry but a tough offshoot of Tennessee pioneers. He talked like a poor white; it is doubtful if he ever read a book on tactics; but he fought like the devil. Biographer Lytle, strong Forrest partisan, implies that if Forrest's abilities had been recognized in time the western campaign might have had a different outcome. But Forrest's commander was General Braxton Bragg, whom Forrest soon distrusted, finally despised. One day he stamped into Bragg's tent, spoke thus: "You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them. And I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you try to inflict on me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path, it will be at the peril of your life." Bragg did not take the dare.

Forrest was a born fighter; what he had to learn about soldiering he learned at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Hog Mountain, Chickamauga, Brice's Cross-Roads. He had a great contempt for West Pointers. After a disastrous action whose plans he had not approved, his commander, General Stephen D. Lee, called a council of war, asked Forrest if he had any ideas. "Yes, sir," said Forrest. "I've always got ideas, and I'll tell you one thing, General Lee. If I knew as much about West Point tactics as you, the Yankees would whip hell out of me every day."

Forrest's name became a byword in the West. When with 500 men he captured 1,700 Federals, ecstatic Southerners dubbed him the Wizard of the Saddle. Sherman vowed he would get him "if it costs 10,000 lives and breaks the Treasury. There will never be peace in Tennessee until Forrest is dead!" But when his was the last organized Confederate force in the West, when news came of Lee's and Johnston's surrenders, Forrest knew the game was up. His men crowded round him, begged him to lead them to Mexico to avoid surrendering. He was tempted, but realized it was a fool idea, surrendered.

After the war Forrest, a delegate to the first post-war Democratic convention, went to Manhattan, "attracted so much attention that he could not move about the streets without drawing a crowd." One day he got tired of the press, "swept his mighty shoulders around and shouted," cleared the street. As soon as he heard about the Ku Klux Klan he joined it, was elected "Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire." (Robert E. Lee had written re fusing the command, approving the idea but saying that his approval must remain "invisible.") In 1877 Forrest died, full of years, scars, memories of battles.

The Author. Andrew Nelson Lytle is one of the group of young literary Southerners (others: Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Lyle Lanier) which is trying to organize an agrarian movement in the South. Author Lytle lives on a farm in north Alabama. Bedford Forrest is his first book.

Pitkin Passes

THE ART OF LEARNING--Walter B. Pitkin--Whittlesey House ($2.50).*

"[This] book is emphatically not intended for sappy souls who sigh for inspiration, in the hope of being kicked upstairs. ... It is a work book. In the hands of a lusty toiler, it will show solid profits." No trilling Pippa of pedagogy, no profound Paracelsus either, Professor Pitkin is nothing if not practical, hates waste, is hot after results. In this Pitkinesque textbook, thumb-printed with many a helpful hint, anecdote, rule, bristling with statistics and questionnaires, you may spend some lively hours, may even learn something about learning.

What shall you learn? Says Pitkin, you must decide that for yourself; but he advises one of the three "hardy perennials in the garden of knowledge": geography, psychology, mathematics. When is the best time of day to work? "For more than 30 years I have made it a rule to study and do other intellectual work as early as possible in the morning. Whenever I can get under way before seven, I do so. Eight o'clock is late. Nine is fatal." Regularity-is important. "Work a little every day at your subject. I mean that you should work 365 days a year at it, except during leap years. Then put in 366 days." Logical, loyal to efficiency, Pitkin gave up smoking when he found it was slowing up his brain work, advises others so to do.

The Author. Walter Boughton Pitkin has worked at 40 different jobs. He started herding cattle at 14, at 53 is professor of journalism at Columbia University. In his spare time he writes books, occasionally gives galvanizing advice to editors of moribund magazines.

Yes-Girl

THE JEWEL--Claire Goll--Knopf ($2).*

Marie was a Parisian maid-of-all-work but a country girl at heart. She worked for the Deloses, an avaricious jeweler and his discontented wife, was in love with Babylas, a mulatto chauffeur. Babylas' motives were neither pure nor unmixed: he took Marie for lack of something better, and hoped through her to get at her master's jewels. When Babylas told Marie his scheme she was horrified, carried her fear so openly on her face that M. Delos took it for an invitation and complacently accepted it. Marie, servant and a yes-girl, wrung her hands and said nothing, not even when she discovered she was pregnant. As soon as Mme Delos saw what was Marie's trouble she fired her.

Marie's few servant friends did what they could for her; now & then a man helped her after blackmailing her into submission; but there was nothing but a little time between her and the bottom of the hill. Her baby was born at a charity hospital and lived long enough to break her heart by dying. At the end Marie found the Seine more comfortable than the boulevards.

Authoress Claire Goll has made a sordid story a little too true to be sordid. Enterprising Publisher Knopf has indicated the dual nature of the book, beckons two different publics by putting out The Jewel in two different jackets: one lurid, one chaste.

Bogus

FATHER MALACHY'S MIRACLE--Bruce Marshall--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).*

Far & few are the writers who can monkey with fantasy without getting just too cute for words. Inimitable Max Beerbohm managed it; some still think Sir James Matthew Barrie, Alan Alexander Milne. Christopher Morley have made surprisingly few errors. Fantasian Bruce Marshall follows a less gossamer authority, Gilbert Keith Chesterton; but in his hands the Chestertonian whimsy loses its robustiousness, gets all buttered up with sticky sentiment. Not that Author Marshall cannot be very sharp on occasion, but, like the latter-day Chesterton, he is sharp only with non-Catholic things.

Roman Catholic Father Malachy Mulligan was summoned from his monastery to an Edinburgh parish to teach a slipshod congregation how to chant plain song. Across the street from the church were two grievous eyesores: a Church of England edifice placarded with snappy ads for religion, and the Garden of Eden dance hall. Of the two, the Garden of Eden was slightly more offensive to the Catholic priest. Father Malachy, meeting the Anglican parson on the street and becoming involved in theological argument, became so annoyed that he promised to perform a miracle: he would cause the Garden of Eden to be transported wherever the Anglican parson wished, at precisely 11:30 the following night. Next evening they met; the parson chose Bass Rock, a little island some 20 miles away; Father Malachy prayed; the deed was done.

Unfortunately the result was not all that the good Father had hoped. Newspapers made a great but skeptical fuss. Protestants openly disbelieved; agnostics thought there was a trick in it; the Roman Catholic Church was more or less embarrassed. Finally Father Malachy, persuaded by an anxious colleague to clinch the matter by performing another miracle, prayed that the dance hall should be returned to its original location. It was done; and in 48 hours the public had forgotten it had ever moved.

Father Malachy's actions may offend some rigidly Catholic readers, but that is not Catholic Author Marshall's intention. Father Malachy is supposed to be a sweet old thing; it is his sweetness (not to say sappiness) that may offend most. This is the way you catch him thinking about God: "Dear old Almighty God; He was a One, He was."

The Author was crippled by the War; brims with Roman Catholic sweetness & light. He works at accounting, writes novels in his spare time, hopes soon to have more spare time. Other books: This Sorry Scheme, The Stooping Venus, The Little Friend.

Too Bad

AND No BIRDS SING--Pauline Leader-- Vanguard ($2.50).

And No Birds Sing bears out the popular notion that blind people are happier than the deaf. Ostensibly the heart-wring-ing autobiography of a poor girl who lost her hearing, this book reads almost like a parody of the o-pity-me school.

She was fat and she was Jewish and her pride was inordinate. She hated her father, her mother, her sisters, the tenement they lived in, the market that gave them their living, the boys & girls she went to school with, the teachers who did not like her. She admits she was dirty and implies she was not much help around the house. She felt she was cut out for higher things, flew into tantrums when she was crossed. She drove her mother wild with suspicious fear by friendships with elderly men, by going to their rooms to talk. Her father beat her but it did no good. One day in her teens she fell ill; when she recovered her hearing was gone.

She became more rebelliously ferocious than ever, turned her gentler impulses to writing poetry, to talking to her soul: "Sh-sh-sh, dear, sh-sh-sh. Stop your quivering. Stop your quivering, dear. We know. We have each other. You must not quiver, dear." She ran away to Manhattan to be a poet, got a room in Greenwich Village, was fired from a succession of jobs. One day she went to a clinic and told the nurse she thought she was going to have a baby (though she did not really think so). She was sent to a home for wayward girls. During the five days she was there she suffered terribly. One of the worst things was watching the staff eat ''hot, golden biscuits, while we tore apart cold rolls." When they discovered she was not going to have a baby they lectured her, sent her away. She thought it was wonderful to be free again.

The Author will not allow her publishers to tell anything about her, but they say her autobiography is true, candid.

Western

GUNSIGHT TRAIL--Alan LeMay--Farrar & Rinehart ($2).

Detective stories have come a long way from Holmes. Best plots are no longer always like chess-problems with one master mind coolly moving toward a mate; clever detectifictioneers now often simplify the story, multiply and humanize the characters. Gimsight Trail is a combination of Western and murder story: it makes a lively yarn.

Cowpuncher Clay Hughes, heading for a job in Buckhorn Valley, made camp on Gunsight Pass. As he was smoking a bed-time cigaret he heard a mule bray, later a shot. He thought it was probably all right until a dying man staggered up to his fire, sprawled dead in the embers. Next day when Clay got to the "Lazy M" Ranch he foolishly let it be known that the murdered man had said something to him before he died. That night Clay was locked up, shot at through the window. Before he could find out what it was all about, hell began to pop in the Buckhorn. Luckily for him Clay was no softy, was also the hero. He fulfilled both roles handsomely before the smoke cleared away and peace and poten- tial plenteousness descended on the Valley.

/-Published May 29.

* Published June 3.

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

*Published June 5.

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