he drew my attention to another field. "What is that?" he said. "There are men and girls with clubs all running among each other. Surely that is war. See how they smite! What Amazons! No wonder England leads the way!"

"No," I said, "that is hockey. Another game."

"And is there a ball there too?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "a ball.”

"But see the garden of that house," he remarked; "that is not hockey. There are only four, but two are women. They also leap about and run and wave their arms. Is there a ball there?"

"Yes," I said, "there is a ball there. That is lawn tennis."

"But the white lines," he said. "Is not that, perhaps, out-door mathematics? That surely may help to serious things?"

"No," I said; "another game. There are millions of such gardens in England with similar lines."

"Yes," he said, for we were now over Surbiton, "I see them at this moment by the score."

We passed on to London. It was at that time of September when football and cricket overlap, and there was not only a crowded cricket match at the Oval but an even more crowded

Punch.

football match at Blackheath. I foresaw trouble.

My friend caught sight of the Oval first. "Ah," he said, "you deceived me. For here is your cricket again, played amid a vast concourse. How can you call it a game? These crowds would not come to see a game played, but would play one themselves. It must be more than you said; it must be a form of tactics that can help to retain England's supremacy, and these men are here to learn."

"No," I said, "no. It is just a game. In England we not only like to play games but to see them played."

It was then that he noticed Blackheath. "Ah, now I have you!" he cried. "Here is another field and another crowd; but this is surely a battle. See how they dash at each other. And yes, look, one of them has his head cut off and the others kick it. Splendid!” "No," I said, "that is no head, that is a ball. Just a ball. It is a game, like the others."

He groaned. "Then I cannot see." he said at last, "how England won her victories and became supreme."

"Ah," said I, "at the time that England was winning her victories and climbing into supremacy few or no games were played. The ball had not then conquered us."

and Mr. Ezra S. Brudno's "The Tether" should explain certain characteristic phases of Jewish life even to those who have never before striven to view it correctly. The author writes as if English were a foreign language to him, but his earnestness overcomes that obstacle and his picture of a Jew's struggle with the iron realities separating him from Christians, the absolute inelasticity of his relations with his own people, is extraordinarily moving. The story is long but it is better worth study than many serious essays on the topics involved. J. B. Lippincott Co.

It is not necessary to bespeak a welcome for the three new volumes,-The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, and Coriolanus— which Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. add to their First Folio Edition of Shakespeare. These volumes bring the total number up to twenty, which is just one-half of the contemplated issue. The prime value of this edition, as is indicated by the title, is that it exactly reproduces the rare First Folio text, with the original spelling and punctuation. This value is enhanced by the introductions, notes, literary illustrations, glossaries, variorum readings and bits of selected criticism supplied by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, who are joint editors of the edition. Convenient in size, attractive in the dainty typography of the De Vinne Press, and moderate in cost, the edition makes a peculiarly strong appeal to lovers and students of Shakespeare.

The version of "Faust," "freely adapted from Goethe's dramatic poem" by Mr. Stephen Phillips and Mr. J. Comyns Carr must, without doubt, be well-fitted for the stage, but the adaptation is indeed free, and will hardly affect those hearing it for the first time as the more literal versions have affected theatre goers. It is true that none of the great scenes, none of the

favorite points is absent, but the words, the turn of the phrases is so purely modern as to change the entire atmosphere. The songs are not so happily rendered into English as Mr. Phillips might be expected to render them, and their diffuseness sometimes makes them inferior to the common versions, and this is especially true of the "Spinning Song," which is not ill-worded for recitation, but would be anything but touching if sung. The stage directions resemble those used by the late Sir Henry Irving. The Macmillan Co.

"Musical Memories" is a title suggesting to those who know musicians a book resembling Indian Wars, The Campaigns of Napoleon, or Battles of the Rebellion, but Mr. George P. Upton's book of that name suppresses the disagreeable deeds and speeches of musicians, and tells only the amusing tales and is thoroughly agreeable. He relates the history of fifty years of musical performances not only in Chicago, his own field as a critic, but in Boston and New York, recalling names long forgotten, names of great geniuses found, in the end, to possess nothing more valuable than unbounded hope; and modest beginners who steadily forced themselves to the higher rounds of the ladder, and of all he knows some good story or some fine trait. A great number of portraits illustrate the text and the frontispiece is a portrait of the author. The binding is solid and tasteful, the printing and paper all that they should be, and the index is so full as to make the book valuable for reference. A. C. McClurg & Co.

With a free hand in architecture an author may complicate and prolong a mystery until his youngest personage becomes a grey beard, and Miss Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Circular Staircase" adds to the impossibility from which it derives its title, various hid

den ways and receptacles, but she is wasteful, and uses all of them in brief space although not too brief for probability. Once past the difficulty of surmising why the story is not called "The Spiral Staircase," or "The Winding Staircase," one is taken through a series of events seen at the last to be logical, although agreeably confused at first sight, partly by the temperament of the supposed narrator, an owl-like but kindly woman, and partly by the resolute determination of the other personages to keep her in ignorance of what is done in her own hired house. Four persons come to a violent death before the mystery surrounding the original murder is solved but enough remain to form a pretty group to bow when the curtain finally falls between it and the pleased reader. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chooses the title of "Round the Fire Stories" for his latest book on the ground that as they are concerned with the grotesque and the terrible they are well-suited for reading "round the fire" upon a winter's night. They include some of the author's best work in this variety, the variety in which he is seen to far greater advantage than in the Sherlock Holmes Stories, and they also include some detective stories for those who insist that Sir Arthur shall always give them fiction of that species. "The Lost Special" and "The Beetle Hunter" are perhaps the best stories in the volume but choice is difficult in a case in which excellence of craftsmanship is uniform. Another "White Company" would be a real benefaction, but if hope for such a gift be vain, it would be a piece of ingratitude not to be thankful for stories in which no useless word mars the effect which the author intends to produce. He modestly says that if they have the good fortune to give pleasure to any one at any time or

place, he shall be satisfied. He will be. The McClure Co.

Four more books for young people come from the press of the Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Brave Little Peggy, by Nina Rhoades, is a story for small girls, which is so sweet and true that it may be hoped that the "Black House Series," in which it is the eighth volume, may stretch on until it rivals the Dotty Dimple books of a generation ago; The Browns at Mt. Hermon, by "Pansy," is a story for grown-up girls, characterized by both humor and sentiment, and introducing some amusing social complications; Everett T. Tomlinson's "Four Boys on the Missis

sippi" is the third volume in "Our Own Land" series, and like its predecessors blends fact and fiction, history and adventure in a way which will impel boy readers quickly through its pages, and will leave with them a not unprofitable residuum of information; and "All Among the Loggers, or Norman Carver's Winter in a Lumber Camp," by Clarence B. Burleigh, opens a new series of boys' stories with a graphic narrative in a new field, the Maine logging camps, with its heroes and incidents truthfully drawn from the wild and daring life of the loggers.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the interest of each of the volumes in which Mr. Frederic Harrison is republishing the great mass of the good and valuable work with which he endowed his contemporaries, to be treasured by posterity, perhaps not for a millennium, but certainly until the questions discussed are forgotten. It is amazing to note how many of the papers in this new volume, "Realities and Ideals," might have been written yesterday, although their dates show that many of them have come to forty year, and only a few are new. Three of these latter discuss the Rights, the Duties, and the Claims of Women, and an

other, "Votes for Women," was written in view of the present agitation, which Mr. Harrison regards as charged with tremendous consequences, political, social and moral. The first essay, "England and France," written forty years ago, sets forth the systematic cooperation of the two countries as the key to peace and progress in Europe and this, be it remembered, was written while Prussia was of small consequence. The book is full of wisdom for the old who remember the occasions of its utterances, and of counsel for the young who see the age as confronted with unprecedented novelties. The Macmillan

Co.

Mr. Richard Burton's imaginative verse and critical prose have hardly prepared readers for the alternating sentiment and humor of his first story, "Three of a Kind," but when is a pleasant surprise unwelcome? The "three" are a dog, a small creature whose very naughtiness and insubordination delight his friends; a newsboy with latent musical gifts, a warm, grateful heart and enough ignorance of poker to say, knowingly, "Three of a kind can beat any old pair"; and a German violinist equally saturated with music and with tender grief for a dead love. Having a tiny garret-home and meeting the newsboy when evidently in need of shelter, protection and guidance, he invites him to share it, and when the dog, having introduced himself to Phil, accompanies him home and flies at the musician, recognizing him, according to Ludovic, as "his long-lost father," he too is taken as a comrade, and the three, "of a kind" in having only one another in all the world, face life together. They make a very pretty story of it, and Mr. Frank T. Merrill illustrates it excellently well both in full page plates and in headings and slight sketches. Readers a-weary of the ordinary story book newsboy will here find a new type and not once will

they be reminded of "Chimmie." Little, Brown & Co.

Inasmuch as all boys regard a cavalry man as the most enviable creature on dry land, it is strange that "Famous Cavalry Leaders" has waited so long for Mr. Charles H. L. Johnston to write it, and, inasmuch as it is very good, it is to be wished for the sake of boys that he had written it sooner. So much the more is the present growth of young readers to be envied for possessing a treasure not owned by its predecessors. Mr. Johnston's subjects are Attila, Saladin, Genghis Khan, Chevalier Bayard, Count Pappenheim, Gustavus Adolphus, Prince Rupert, Ziethen Von Seydlitz, Marion, Ney, Murat, "Jeb" Stuart, Sheridan and Custer, and he writes their histories simply, but in the language natural to an educated man, not in the crude monosyllabic dialect prescribed for children by inistaken pedagogy. A real child loves long words, and is astonishingly skilful in divining their signification when they are used about a topic in which he is interested, and he will understand Mr. Johnston. The volume is illustrated with half-tone battle scenes and good portraits, of which the earlier examples are curious. The visages of Attila, Genghis Khan, and Saladin might well stir the imagination of the manly boys for whom Mr. Johnston writes. L. C. Page & Co.

Portuguese Africa is a region unfamiliar to the ordinary American and Mr Harold Birdloss might say almost anything in his clever story of "Long Odds" with no fear of contradiction; but he chooses to write of a topic on which Americans and Englishmen have for nearly a century regarded themselves as intuitively well-informed, African slavery, and he does not follow the accepted tradition. His hero leaves Africa, where he has been for some years, to go home and marry

a conventional English girl, and then greatly offends by leaving her before marriage to return to Africa and free a girl and a few men, once the property of a dead friend. In executing this duty he sees many of the varied aspects in which the white man's ownership of the black man presents itself in Africa, and is forced to perceive that the uncivilized black man cannot be compelled to work regularly except by some one able to inflict pain upon him. He finds those who know the country virtually at one on this matter, and while he is making his discovery he is falling in love with a clever Portuguese girl, and when told that his betrothed has married a richer man, he accepts the position with infinite calmness. This is the first study of the African labor question, and of the Portuguese in Africa from this point of view, and it is also a good love story. Small, Maynard & Co.

Professor Charles W. Colby's "Canadian Types of the Old Regime" is composed of lectures delivered before the May Court Club of Ottawa, and the nature of its peculiarity is indicated by its title. The types chosen are Champlain, Boébœuf, Hébert, D'Iberville, Du Lhut, Talon, Laval, and Frontenac. An introductory chapter entitled, "The Historical Background of New France," and a closing chapter composed of brief accounts of the most noteworthy among the Frenchwomen who came early to Canada, complete the work. The author's intention of promoting harmony between the French and English in Canada is made visible in many ways, and is plainly set forth in a few passages, but it is subordinated to the general plan of giving a correct view of New France, and here the work opens ground hardly touched by Parkman, because Professor Colby's desire is to unearth matters interesting to the mod

ern Canadian, indifferent to their value to the New Englander. Because it is intended for another class of readers the citizen of the United States may learn much from this work, if he peruse it imaginatively and not mechanically. The author dryly says that "history does not exist simply for the benefit of the erudite, and there are always some to whom a book is recommended by the absence of specific gravity." His own book has sufficient specific gravity to make a place for itself in the historical literature of its time. Henry Holt & Co.

The small library of books on photography includes but few useful to ordinary children, and those boasting single chapters addressed to boys are often positively misleading. "Photography for Young People," by Mr. Tudor Jenks, does not err on the side of triviality but the author seems to mistake the boy of to-day for the boy of his own youth, and not only gives him rules, but also supplies him with reasons, and reasons are the last things with which the boy of to-day can be trusted. Rules he will not ordinarily obey, but chemistry, photography, many branches of physics teach him the perils of disobedience. Provided with a reason, he rushes into inference with disastrous results, and therefore the wise parent or teacher will compel a boy to master Mr. Jenks' early chapters before glancing at those forming the latter two-thirds of the book. Here the qualities of lenses, the camera, exposure and developing and printing are treated, and as much of the history of the art is given as is necessary to stimulate the young student's perseverance in difficulties. The entire book is written seriously and soberly not in the kindergarten spirit, but with grave enthusiasm. The boy who voluntarily undertakes photography does not need coaxing or petting, and in treating him as willing