PAGE SIX THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1923
BOOKS AND WRITERS have made the poverty-stricken Fabre shams of all sorts was a pious boy, reviled by scientists whose progress in
(Continued from Page Five) gasp. le recounts student pranks who saw in the complicated nervous science had been made possible by his
this "Story of Development" is made and experiences in discussion and mi- system of man the mark of divine in- discoveries. Today Fabre is a popu-
up of letters that the young man-by croscopy; praises certain liberal pro- telligence, and in the adaptation of lar idol, approved by churchmen and
necessity a student of medicine first testant churches and works himself organisms divine kindness. Like agnostic; Haeckel is a bone of con-
and zoology second-wrote while at into a fine fury over the ceremonies many protestant Christians, he saw' tention wherever Chritsians meet,
school or on vacations. He describes and privileges of Catholicism. For evil only in the Catholic church, and even though they may think it is Dar-
his room and his meals and tells what in his youth Haeckel, the champion imagined that between it and his own win over whom they eternally
he paid for them-prices that would of monism and attacker of religious faith there was a difference of kind wrangle. Of the two Haeckel did the
rather than on degree. The difference bigger work and the more lasting, yet
between Haeckel and most protest- it were foolish to try to say which did
ants lay in the fact that he ceased ! the better. The lives of the two men
imagining and took to knowing-but form a queer jumble of right and
that is not part of this tale. The note wrong, justice and injustice, that fit
of originality is present in other better into the philosophy of Haeckel
YOU will be more thoughts and activities, and the Haeck- than that of Fabre.
el of Wurzburg college days was by Of the books themselves, little is to
than satisfied no means an ordinary youth. He pre- be said. Haeckel's is a collection of
ferred thinking to believing, and hours letters, and letters only, with more
with the food with a microscope to nights in a bier- substance than is to be found in most
stube. From a boy with such likings books of its kind. Mr. Bicknell's is
an d service one may expect things. a collection of extracts from the books
Let us contrast with Haeckel's life of Fabre, rather well selected, and
that of Fabre. Born of peasants, his not too well pieced together by edi-
at parents were illiterate and his rela- torial court-plasters that suggest the
tives nearly so. His father kept little Burgess Bed-time Stories. It is a
restaurants, staying in one town until handy volume, and accomplishes Its
Tuttles Lunch Room business failed, and moving on to an- purpose, but it makes no great con-
338 Maynard St. South of Majestic other, to repeat the process. Little tribution to the biography of a great
Jean Henri got his first schooling naturalist.
In a peasant hut where pigs and MODERN COMPOSERS OF EUROPE,
chickens mingled with the students; by Arthur Elson. The Page Co.
_____________________ _____ where instruction was given only to GRAND OPERA SINGERS OF TODAY
those who already could read, and I by Henry C. Lahee. The Page Co.
hay-making was more important than Mr. Elson begins his book with a
\\\\\ i larithmetic. Beyond this he dug out picture of Rimsky-Korsakoff and a
most of his education for himself, chapter on Richard Strauss, so I reals-
against the ridicule of his relatives ly expected something from it. My
_-'and fellow-teachers. Finally estab- first jar came when I found that Mr.
lishing himself with a little income, Elson considers Wagner "one of the
'he married, and managed to support few great geniuses that music has pro-
a family on less than $350 a year. He duced"; my second with the discovery
had the audacity to teach science to that the chapter on Strauss contains
girls, and was fired by the French pre- no mention of "Salome", and ends with
decessors of .Mr. Sumner and Justice the declaration that its composer is
Ford. He excited the ire of a village i "astray in his orchestral paths of
priest, and was driven from the town musical ugliness." Rimsky-Korsakoff,
by two bigoted old maids. The cleri- too, is listed as a great musician, while
cal party refused him equipment for Moussorgsky is a sort of second-rate
scientific research because it was pro- 'muddler who didn't know much about
fane and useless, and the anticlericals composition and had few ideas on har-
stopped the sale of his books because mony. In the tag-end chapters which
they dwelt too much upon God to be entitle the book to the label."second
used in the schools. In the height of edition," these faults are somewhat
'his prosperity he earned as much as madified. But at the best, it is a
$3,000 per year; at the height of his nuisance to look in two places for
Buy Your Christmas achievements he had to accept charity one thing.
Diamond Now. Use Our Christ- forced from a reluctant government
Gift weekly by his friends. Fabre's books, that! Mr. Lahee might well have entitled
A YMENT can be read and understood by a child, his book a "History of Modern Amer-
sold in hundreds; Haeckel's, that can can Opera, with Notes on Opera Sing-,
URCHASE be assimilated only by the hardest la-I ers." The account Is a sympathet
LAN bor, were translated into fourteenOne, though rather disjointed. Mr.
tongues and went through so many Lahee manages not to offend by at-
We also sell Watches, Clocks, and f editionththepaswoeu
Jewelry on this plan edtOs that the plates wore out. Yet tacking no one, and he offers few
in the last years of his life Fabre was opinions that are not taken from press
SCGLANDERER & SEYFRIED .; honored by the world and loved by his reports. There is little uniformity
JEWELERS associates, while Haeckel had to fight about the book; one has to think twice
304 S. MAIN 1for space in his own building and was (Continued on Page Seven)
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