dren say to _A Wonder Book_, by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
with pictures in color by Arthur Rackham? I do not know why I ask this
rhetorical question, which, like most questions of the sort, should be
followed by exclamation points! There will be exclamations, at any rate,
over this book, surely the most beautiful of the year, perhaps of several
years. The quality of Arthur Rackham's work is well known, its artistic
value is undisputedly of the very highest. And Hawthorne's text--the story
of the Gorgon's head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the rest--is of
the finest literary, poetic and imaginative worth.

CHAPTER XI

COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION

=i=

As a three-dimensional writer, Irvin S. Cobb has long been among the
American literary heavy-weights. Now that he has acquired a fourth
dimension, the time has come for a new measurement of his excellences as
an author.

Among those excellences I know a man (responsible for the manufacture of
Doran books) who holds that Cobb is the greatest living American author.
The reason for this is severely logical, to wit: Irvin Cobb always sends
in his copy in a perfect condition. His copy goes to the manufacturer of
books with a correctly written title page, a correctly written copyright
page, the exact wording of the dedication, an accurate table of contents,
and so on, all the way through the manuscript. Moreover, when proofs are
sent to Mr. Cobb, he makes very few changes. He reduces to a minimum the
difficulties of a printer and his changes are always perceptibly changes
for the better.

But I don't suppose that any of this would redound to Cobb's credit in the
eyes of a literary critic.

[Illustration: IRVIN S. COBB]

And to return to the subject of the fourth dimension: My difficulty is to
know in just what direction that fourth dimension lies. Is the fourth
dimension of Cobb as a novelist or as an autobiographer? It puzzles me to
tell inasmuch as I have before me the manuscripts of Mr. Cobb's first
novel, _J. Poindexter, Colored_, and his very first autobiography, a
volume called _Stickfuls_.

The title of _Stickfuls_ will probably not be charged with meaning to
people unfamiliar with newspaper work. Perhaps it is worth while to
explain that in the old days, when type was set by hand, the printer had a
little metal holder called a "stick." When he had set a dozen lines--more
or less--he had a "stickful." Although very little type is now set by
hand, the stick