Doctor's Aphorisms

MEDITATIONS IN WALL STREET--Anonymous--Morrow ($1.50).

When Meditations in Wall Street appeared early last month, it induced a fair amount of speculation about the identity of the anonymous author. In his fussily graceful preface, Albert Jay Nock implied not only that Mr. "A. B." is dead but that he is embalmed in more than a few grains of salt. A reviewer for Commonweal suggested that Nock was merely hiding behind himself. In the Herald Tribune, Banker-Litterateur Lewis Galantiere unveiled the Meditator as his "master," Dr. Erasmus Beebe, "the recluse of Remsen Street." (Mr. Galantiere admitted later that he was just having a little fun, hornswoggling credulous readers.) At month's end the author, dead or alive, remained anonymous; his slow-spoken aphorisms continued to make friends.

A first-rate aphorism is as hard, as clear, and as slowly to be digested, as a diamond; a bad one is more like a cut-rate banana. A. B.'s meditations in this tough form are uneven, carry a literary taint ("the gods," and "Milady"). But a great many are sharply perspicacious, quietly durable.

Well-deserved, in fact, is Sponsor Albert Jay Nock's boost: "A worthy, unusual and original contribution to American letters." Samples:

> If an amendment safeguards you, oppose it.

> Known principles are the barbed-wire entanglements around the detention camps where our intuitions are restrained from going into warfare.

> Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. . . .

> Those who are sly try to slink behind honor, calling on wisdom to fight for deceit.

> If we dropped our stratagems for six months, our growing pains would become so acute that we could hardly walk.

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