Page 3 - 1912 February - To Dragma

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72 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

WOMEN'S PROFESSIONS A N D INTERESTS

For some time we have been planning an issue of To DRAGMA

which should be devoted to the interests of the alumnae. The

experiences of the sisters who have worked professionally will be

of great interest to those girls not yet settled in their life work,

and especially to those who do not wish to teach, after finishing

college, but expect to do so, following the line of least resistance.

The articles are far too short for the amount of interest they con-

tain but a sorority magazine cannot be large enough to hold every-

thing concerning the deeds and thoughts of our sisters that we are

eager to know. VIRGINIA ESTERLY.

THE RED LANTERN.

A O IT may well take pride in her members who have succeeded
in the difficult field of literature. Her newest novelist is Edith
Wherry, whose name is found on the title page of "The Red Lantern."

Edith Wherry is a charter member of 2 Chapter of A O IT.
She graduated from the University of California in '07. She was
married August 23, 1911, to Dr. H . S. Muckleston and is now
living at 1 1 6 University Street, Montreal. Her father, the Reverend
John Wherry, D.D., has been for many years a missionary in China,
where he is at present.

On September 14, 1911, there appeared in the Paris edition of
the Continental Weekly the following review of Edith Wherry's
novel, "The Red Lantern". (John Lane: London and New York),
signed by the editor, H . Villiers Barnett.

A STRANGE NOVEL OF T H E BOXER REBELLION
This book is extraordinary, picturesque, and profoundly interesting. The
"heathen Chinee" as an individual is not unknown in fiction; from Brer Harte's
time to this day he flits grotesque and enigmatic through pages nof a few.
But, so far as I know, this is the first novel that attempts a portraiture of
the Chinese people: that subordinates, in the literary picture, the white to
the yellow race. The result is very astonishing and fascinating: I warmly
commend it to all in search of a new theme, new knowledge and new
sensations.

Miss Wherry—who, I understand, is the daughter of an American miss-
ionary in the Far East—has evidently studied her subject at first hand, from
the life. Her book is clearly not an invention; it is a document. Somewhat
in the manner of Salammbo: as though a sort of American feminine
Flaubert had endeavored to do for Pekin and the Boxer rising what the
real Flaubert did for Carthage and the Revolt of the Mercenaries.

But this is not to say that Miss Wherry is as good a writer as was
Flaubert. She describes well, with an almost Flaubertian passion for detail,