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dren, and they will fancy that Miss Maude Barrows Dutton's "The Tortoise and the Geese" contains tales by a new writer. Her version is clear and simple and Mr. E. Boyd Smith's illustrations are perfect. Nobody portrays a conceited beast so well as he, and the varieties of strut to be found in this group of pictures should make wellmannered modest little boys and girls of the readers. Houghton, Mifflin Co.

Marion Harland's portrait is the frontispiece of "The Housekeeper's Week" under which title she instructs the fourth generation of her fortunate disciples. In this work she first describes and directs the special work of each day; then she tells what should be done every day; and lastly she tells something about all the processes of cleaning and repairing and recuperating omitted in the early chapters. Even the care of the sick, and bathing find a place somewhere in the 450 pages. If anything be omitted a search for topics not mentioned in many other manuals has been invariably successful in this. Bobbs, Merrill Co.

Mr. Joseph B. Ames's "Pete, Cow Puncher" is not the wild creature who shoots up the town, but a young New Yorker who, feeling mentally unfit to fulfil his father's ideal of graduating from Yale, goes to Texas hoping to like "cow-punching." The hard ugliness of some of the work does not dismay him, the charm of the wide spaces and clean air entrances him, and when his father comes in search of him he finds his boy repentant, respectful, but sure that his feet are set in the right path for him. The story is not likely to lead any young reader to Texas, or to rebellion against paternal authority, but it cannot but interest any boy with a taste for knowing many sides of life. Henry Holt & Co.

The melancholy death of "Ouida" sets her last work beyond the pale of just comment on the faults due to her temperament, although all of them appear in "Helianthus." It is a romance of a non-existent European kingdom, the hero being a prince of the royal house, the heroine the greatgrand-daughter of a patriot, the victim of the reigning sovereign, and its burden is the cruel fate of one held fast in the invisible bonds enmeshing royalty, and the general depravity of royalty itself. The book had been read in proof by the author, and although left unfinished, its ending is evident, and it is as well worth reading as any of her work. The Macmillan Co.

Mrs. Edith Ogden Harrison, author of "The Flaming Sword and other Legends of the Earth and Sky," explicitly requests that "in offering her fancies to the public there shall be no confusion of her imaginative legend with the true Bible story." It is easy for an adult to obey her, but a child is likely to be misled by such straightforward statements as that which she makes in regard to the position of Heaven in the star Alcyone. The Tales are written in tastefully chosen and well-phrased words, and their atmosphere is calm and beautiful. Miss Lucy Fitch Perkins's pictures in black and white are always good, and some of them are excellent in their illusion of star-strewn sky-heights. A. C. McClurg Co.

No one else has quite the knack of Mr. E. V. Lucas in the making of anthologies. There is an indescribable flavor, an impress of originality in his selection and grouping of quotations which gives them fascination. Last year he gave us a delightful anthology of children's poetry, and a whimsical and charming collection of letters under the title "The Gentlest Art." This year his anthology is for women and

of them "The Ladies' Pageant" (The Macmillan Co.). In it he has grouped from scores of sources old and new tributes to women, studies of them and gentle gibes at them, in prose and verse. The book is attractively printed and bound and makes a pretty companion to "The Gentlest Art."

The hero who rescues a beautiful child from a life of ignorance and poverty, and educates her in order to make her his wife; a Cumberland Mountain quarrel between families; and an unsuccessful land speculation, are not new themes for fiction, but, braid them into one strand, make the hero a strong but entirely unpretentious man; give the little girl pride in the bravery of her family and warm love for her humble friends and kindred, and bestow upon their enemies and hero courage and cunning, and the elements of a new story will be the result. Add to it an easy, unaffected style, and a fair description of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" appears. Mr. John Fox, Jr. is a formidable rival for his predecessors in the same field, but it is wide enough for them and many another. Charles Scribner's Sons.

"Sydney at College," Miss Anna Chapin Ray's 1908 book for very young girls, differs from all other stories of girls in American colleges in setting the girl from Canada and the girl from the United States in contrast, and criticizing both more thoroughly and more beneficially than would be possible by taking each separately. The criticism is not formal; it is given in talk and incident, and is a very good story, with an English peer of the funniest kind to contest with the American and Canadian man. Bungay, bad little Bungay of the earlier Sydney books, is present and obliges with two songs. In the Grand Central Station, to the confusion of his family, he sings, "There was a bear, Without a hair, Who climbed a

tree, And he did see, A bee!" There is very little of Bungay, but he is effective as a hornet. Little, Brown & Co.

"The Character of Jesus," by the Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, D. D. (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers), contains twenty-six discourses preached on Sunday evenings in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York City. They present Jesus from the human point of view, as very man, while they do not impeach or exclude His Divinity. Each sermon emphasizes a single trait of the Master's character, His sincerity, His originality, His optimism, His patience, His courage, etc. Addressed primarily to "the man in the street" or to men just come from the street, they make no pretensions of critical profundity. They are direct, forceful and appealing, and from the printed page they convey somewhat the same impression of reality and vividness which must have moved the congregation to which they were addressed.

Good "bad spelling" is rare, and the ignorance of nearly all who attempt it flames even beside the scarlet sins of the dialect writer, but in Miss Grace Donworth's "The Letters of Jennie Allen" one finds something like the errors of the schoolboy, and entirely different from those of the reformed speller. Apparently the letters come from the pen of an ignorant seamstress, and are addressed to a member of the San Francisco relief committee of Providence; in truth, they were the work of a mischievous member of the committee, who, after the success of the first one or two, set herself to make an artistic piece of deceit. Jennie tells everything that happens in the household of which she is a member, and her punctuation is as the punctuation of Flora Finching and her logic as the logic of Mrs. Nickleby. She is deliciously absurd, especially when read

aloud, and her spelling is nearly perfect. Jennie's sayings will be the innocent jokes of the season in many a household, and it will be strange if she does not make her way to the platform. Small, Maynard & Co.

The late Mr. Robert Neilson Stephens made himself so large a circle of readers by his novels and plays that the "Memory" by "J. O. G. D." of Philadelphia, prefacing "Tales from Bohemia," a volume of his short stories now first published in book form, will be highly appreciated by thousands of readers. It is a charming little sketch, showing the ways by which Stephens passed to his place as a successful author. Originally he was a phonographer, a creature not quite so rare in the United States as J. O. G. D. seems to think, but not conspicuous because he is always at work, somewhere between the National Capitol, where he is supreme, and the nether deep, as he deems it, where flounder the stenographers. The tales were written during a sad passage of the author's life, while he and his mother were helping one another to bear her suffering from a fatal disease, and they follow a French fashion of making a single incident reveal a character, the incidents being taken from the author's experience and observation. The slightest possible thread of connection unites them, but each is complete in itself, a good piece of artistic work, relic of an author whose whole strength went forth in whatsoever he set his hand to do, and who died too young. Mr. Wallace illustrates the tales by eight clever pictures agreeing with text, most uncommon merits. L. C. Page & Co.

of

Miss Agnes Repplier's annual volume has come to be the consolation of those Americans sometimes tempted to wish themselves English that they might be natives of a country in which essayists still study the art of writing, in

stead of patching together the latest tags from plays and slang from the gutter. Miss Repplier's writing is invariably the culmination of long reading, deeply enjoyed, and pleasantly remembered, and her "A Happy Half Century" crowns some especially happy study of the years intervening between 1775 and 1825, in England a period fertile in authors of strong characteristics and interesting product, and she treats them and their work in a manner all her own. Under the head of "The Perils of Immortality" she discusses the vexations which fate heaps upon the successful author in compensation for his fame; the paper headed "When Lalla Rookh was Young" sets forth the droll outbreak of sham Orientalism in English literature and in English society after Moore published his most elaborate piece of work. "The Correspondent" celebrates the memory of the immense volume of words sent by post in the days when a letter was a luxury; "The Novelist" dwells upon the severe modesty of the current fiction of the time; "On the Slopes of Parnassus" mercilessly sketches some of the mistaken souls who dreamed of poesy but to whom the genuine numbers never came, and "The Literary Lady" is in the same vein. To-day, the literary lady lives only in the vocabulary of the "saleslady," but at this safe distance she is a highly amusing figure. "The Child," "The Educator" and "The Pietist" minutely describe three types, "The Accursed Annual" and "The Album Amicorum," two products of the time, and "Our Accomplished Great Grandmother" portrays a creature recurrent in the producers of decalcomanie, patchomanie, the abominable crazy quilt, and the photograph-frame of crossed straws. The very brief preface points out the real value of these subjects in spite of what some might deem triviality, but no study of Miss Repplier's is trivial. Houghton, Mifflin Co.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XLI.

No. 3360 November 28, 1908.

{Vol. CCLIX.

FROM BEGINNING

CONTENTS

1. Plots and Persons in Fiction. By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

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DUBLIN REVIEW 515

As an Indian Sees America: The Yellow Ad-Man. By Mr.
Saint Nihal Sing
HINDUSTAN REVIEW 521
Hardy-on-the-Hill. Chapter VI. By M. E. Francis (Mrs. Francis
Blundell). (To be continued.)

TIMES 525

Georges Clemenceau. By Augustin Filon FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 532
The Intelligence of the Plant. By S. Leonard Bastin

Peter's Wife. By Lilian Gask

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PALL MALL MAGAZINE

The Prime Minister's Patronage. By Michael MacDonagh

539 IDLER 544

CHAMBERS's JOURNAL 548

A Jubilee Day at Lourdes. By H. H. Bashford

The International Congress on Roads.
Thanksgiving. .

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IX..

X.

XI.

XII.

The Downfall of the Democratic Party.
The Republican Triumph.

The American Presidential Election.

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents

Jer annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if ssible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

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While the tall slender trees fade off Shelley's melodious miracle shall reign For generations' joy, and still maintain

on either side.

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