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THE CHICAGO BANKER
October 30, /909]
Chatterbox
Thousands of American families have the Chatterbox habit. It has in many cases come down from a former generation. The 1909 Chatterbox contains 40 short stories and 250 original illustrations, many of them in colors. It is the premier children’s book of the world and the most popular. Grown people read it, but at Christmas time thousands of American boys and girls get a copy with regularity. It contains short stories, puzzles, and poems and is in fact an encylcopedia of desirable literature for children. Published by Dana Estes & Co., Boston, at $1.25.
V*
The Best of the New Books
(Continued from page 27) causes, sees her as a pathetic creature in whom the good is struggling for domination over the bad.
Keen psychical analysis, brilliant dramatic invention, vast surplusage of colloquy and a wealth of graphic description mark the long and leisurely course of the tale of cunning eastern intrigue and tumultuous, elemental passion.
ROBERT HICHENS Author of Bella Donna
To gain liberty to join her lover the entangled woman subjects her husband to a regimen of slow lead poisoning. When this is interrupted by the London doctor the storm of passion breaks. The novelist’s portrayal of a desperate, love-crazed woman is almost painful in its intensity.
It is a tale transcending bounds of common experience, vivified by an indefinable spirit of modern romance—a prose epic of passion that burns and stings, and at last destroys.
Published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
“A Reformer by Proxy” by John Parkinson and published by the John Lane Company, New York, is a book about speculation and will interest bankers, financiers and others by its realism, which isn’t more than gently overdrawn. Reginald Baxter’s uncle leaves a will bequeathing to his nephew $130,0000, provided he makes $1,500 in speculations on the Stock Exchange in between six and seven months. Baxter has been brought up in a Puritanical household and his experiences as a lamb among the wolves of finance are mighty interesting.
Maurice Hewlett has a string of successful books to his credit and his new novel of life today is not only an exquisite love story, but a great romance of life out of doors in England. Senhouse,the vagabond botanist, painter and poet, the hero of “Halfway House,” is the hero of this story. The heroine, a fascinating, appealing and intensely alive girl, meets Senhouse in the course of a very piquant adventure. What happens to (Continued on page 30)
Some of the Latest Novels
Any book from Harper’s invites attention. “Ann Veronica,” by H. G. Wells, will also hold it to the end. The new book is a study of the unrest that characterizes the modern woman. That Mr. Wells believes enthusiastically in the utmost liberty of thought for women is already established, but “Ann Veronica” voices his conviction that women not only cannot be men, but do not want to be men; that they must be true to their sex, and that the inward cry of that sex is for marriage and maternity. All of this is interwoven with a beautiful English romance in high life. Really the book has mission for discontented women and their blindly led followers. Illustrated in colors. Price $1.50-Harper Brothers, N. Y.
“Miss Selina Lue,” from the Bobbs-Merrill house at Indianapolis, is an unique. In its way it is the best thing of the early season and will bring hosts of admirers to Maria Thompson Davies, the author. The full title is “Miss Selina Lue and the Soap Box Babies,” and gives an idea of what follows.
“Sympathy,” says “Miss Selina Lue,” briefly epitomizing her own character, “is jest the pure juice of the heart squeezed out fer a friend.” The speaker, described by Maria Thompson Davies, is a middle-aged maiden of motherly heart, who, from her vantage as grocer of the Bluff, dispenses wit and wisdom, balanced by unnumbered good works, to all her shiftless but adoring neighbors. Particularly does Miss Selina Lue, who has left behind her “a empty home and a full graveyard,” spend herself in behalf of Ethel Maud, Carrote, Blossom and the other “soap box babies” whom the reader grows to love almost as much as she does. A tender love thread runs througn the lightly written, amusing chapters, drawing together sweet Cynthia Page and Alan Kent, the rising young painter who boards in Miss Selina Lue’s barn, but it is the quaint sayings of the dear woman herself that warm the heart’s cockles. For instance:
Babies is like human beings, they can’t always be counted on to do the best they knows.
The mother job is one that ain’t cut out to suit everybody, and them it fits have got a duty laid on ’em strong.
It always did seem a shame to me how folks hand a bride around on a feather, so to speak, and jest let the poor groom shift fer himself like he were some sort of a criminal.
When I see a curl of religion sprouting up I think it’s best ter kinder shine on it pleasantlike, but not to take too much notice until it roots good.
To sum up: Plenty of smiles and chuckles in this tenderly human study, with enough of pathos and excitement to keep the laughter in tune.
Two other attractive books have been sent out by the same publishers, gotten up in the highest type of the book-binder’s art. “Virginia of the Air Lanes” by Herbert Quick, is a daring romance of the air at about the close of the present century when few of the rich travel any other way than by airship. The descriptive work including storms, conflicts, rescues and all will rival anything in literature and the ending is the happy medium. “The Game and the Candle” by Eleanor M. Ingram, covers high life on both continents, even royalty itself. The work is of the kind to please young ro-mancists and for them will be sufficiently realistic. The plot begins in strife in California and ends among nihilists, bomb-throwers and royalty in Russia. It reads like a dream book, the men are so brave and the women so fair.
E. H. Hall has been elected to the assistant cashiership of the Henderson National of Huntsville, Ala.
the deposits of foreign laborers so-called did not long stay in this country, as was evidenced by the money orders of transfer to other countries.
I am not so vigorously opposed to a restricted experiment with postal savings banks in such states as have not the facilities for savings banks, but I do not deem it wise to embark on a large scale in cumbering the administrative government with individual affairs, which it seems to me, cannot be so well developed and conserved by public administration as by individual direction and responsibility. The bankers of the country are charged with being selfish in their opposition to postal savings banks. This may be in a measure true, but not altogether so. They view with alarm the direction and custodianship of banking facilities that are under the direction of the government postal service. The postoffice department is now a huge machine. The receipts and expenditures, money orders (domestic and foreign) during the fiscal year !907-’o8, are given in the following table:
Receipts....................$94,356,469.48
Expenditures ............... 98,391,504.83
Money orders issued:
Number Amount
Domestic ......64,864,570 $498,699,637.49
Foreign ....... 3,711,640	88,972,388.31
Is it wise to further load the postoffice department with the responsibilities of postal
BENNETT LOAN AND TRUST COMPANY Sioux City, Iowa
savings banks? The po§toffice department is now in its receipts and expenditures almost independent of the United States treasury. The United States treasurer is simply the custodian of the accumulated funds, and which are subject, not to his check, but to that of the postmaster-general, but if any deficit occurs, the treasurer is authorized to make it good.
If too ambitious and widespread a change in our financial system be attempted, it is likely to arouse great apprehension, suspicion and violent opposition. Would it not be better to utilize what we can of the national banking system that has proved up, and supplement it by such additions as will adequately meet the growing demands for banking accommodations ?
With the “National Clearing House Bank” we would eliminate the need of emergency currency, because this would be automatic and direct in its operations without being confused by any currency conditions. We could then wait and see how well or ill the experiment turned out. It does not seem necessary to destroy the system of Chase that for years (more than half a century) has been synonymous with the most colossal financial transactions of the world, to install the system of questionable adaptation. Let us hold fast to that which is
C. R. Weldon, of Lincoln, Neb., has taken steps to organize a new bank at Peru.
Frederick C. McDuffie has been elected a director of the First National of Boston, Mass.