Lady Betty Stair!

As charming a story as one will find in a long summer's reading is The History of the Lady Betty Stair, by Molly Elliott Seawell. It is a tale of the times of Terror, when the nobility of France were living (those that were left alive) as emigrés in other lands. The Comte d'Artois was domiciled at Holyrood palace, and there in an uncongenial surrounding of Scotch "canniness," was holding a phantom court. Among his few faithful followers are the characters of this story. Dainty Lady Betty is of that part of the Scotch nobility which clung to the old faith and so had learned to look to the court of France as the only available opening for its scions. Her pretty love affair with De Bourmont and its pitiful break, Lady Betty's transformation into Sister Clare of the Sisters of Mercy, her brave career as nurse among the soldiers of the Napoleonic wars, and De Bourmont's gallant service and promotion till they meet for the last time as in the presence of the whole army he pins to her Sister's habit the Grand Cross for Tried Bravery, these are the incidents of the book. But it is in the telling that this moving tale gains its charm. There are bits of humor in it, delicate glimpses of human feeling, touches of good description, and a swing to the scenes of action, seldom equaled nowadays. It is in some respects the "Lucille" theme, but handled without the mawkish sentimentality of that, and with so much more simplicity and truth that it comes close to the heart of the reader.

The illustrations are by Thule de Thulstrup, and we are permitted to present our readers with an example, the scene where Sister Clare seizes a bomb that threatens her wounded heroes and carries it to a safe distance from them, to be herself badly wounded by the explosion.

Burroughs's Study of Whitman2

IN DISCUSSING such a book as Burroughs's Whitman it is almost impossible to keep to the subject in hand. To consider Burroughs's idea of Whitman involves comparison with others' ideas of him, and that opens the question of the whole Whitman cult. Now that a poet becomes the study of a cult is not necessarily his fault, it may be only his misfortune. Yet the chances are that the poet of a cult has small or untrained sense of beauty of form and delights in dark

The History of the Lady Betty Stair. By Molly Elliott Seawell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 1897.

2 Whitman. A Study. By By John Burroughs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company: Boston: 1897.

Copyrighted 1897 by Charles Scribners Sons

66 SHE WAS JUST HALF A MINUTE TOO LATE"

sayings, which may be profound but are just as likely to be merely vague and obscure. One added quality in his work is generally a handling of social problems, especially those in connection with sex, in defiance of existing customs and laws, even the Decalogue. These characteristics give opportunity for many to wax famous as readers of riddles or as social theorists; hence the cult, which, however, cannot long keep their poet from the hands and hearts of the laity of readers, if the root of the matter be in him.

That Walt Whitman is such a poet, such a literary storm center, so to speak, there is no denying. But that Mr. Burroughs assumes the oracular does not follow. Mr. Burroughs has gotten into the habit of writing clearly and with moderation, modestly, too, for in all his work on Nature, he never assumes that he is an especially retained interpreter, or in any way essential to the business. Perhaps his long devotion to Nature has tended to make him a careless critic of art, which after all is other than Nature, but he brings to this study of Whitman the same spirit that animates his other work. One feels that the poet has

roused in him love and has been to him a ministrant of good.

To three classes of readers the book will bring pleasure, those who already appreciate Whitman, those who are willing to read him without prejudice, and perhaps largest class of all, those who have grown used to trusting Mr. Burroughs in many walks afield.

A Reply to Nordau1.

WHOEVER the author of this work may be, he is well worthy of the imprimatur of one of Columbia's talented professors. All who have read "Degeneration" ought in fairness to themselves to read this book. It is no screech against an assailer of our common humanity and its hopes and fears, its successes and seeming failures; but a quiet and powerful exposure of Nordau's faulty reasoning and wild affirmations. Men generally hesitate about reading rejoinders. They will be agreeably surprised when they have laid down this book. Far from denying every statement in "Degeneration," it shows how true it is that gross abuses abound in the world today, but refuses to believe that such abuses will in time absorb all that is still good and sound. But rather it takes the ground, which all sober minds have ever held, that very evil works in the end to the betterment of man. The author treats systematically all the points made by Nordau and the men and women that famous book puts into the pillory. The chapter on Wagner is especially fine. His analysis of Nordau himself gives the key to the pessimism of the man, and is most interesting. Throughout there is shown a grand power of insight and careful study of human nature. Some have said that Nordau is unanswerable. Let them read this work. It is in every way the peer of "Degeneration" and causes the average man who was strangled in the fierce assault of Nordau to breathe again freely and say, "Life is good."

Maria Edgeworth's Stories2

AMONG the old time books that have been found worthy of modern dress and illustration is the volume of stories for children frankly named by Miss Edgeworth The Parent's Assistant. Older people, to whose infant minds "Simple Susan" seemed a tale of thrilling interest and moral greatness, will wonder in an amused way how these stories will strike youngsters spoiled by the great flood of easy and exciting stories and lavish pictures that make up the children's literature of today

Such an older person reading the stories reads into them the memory of youth and the glamor of childish impressions and thrills again with a little of the old

Regeneration. A Reply to Max Nordau. With an introduction by Professor Butler. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York: 1897.

2The Parent's Assistant. By Maria Edgeworth. Macmillan & Co.: New York: 1897.

time spirit. A severer test is needed to see whether the tales still have life in themselves. So this present reviewer took the book to a household where there are four lively boys of from seven to thirteen years of age. He simply introduced it as new story book and left it to its fate. The result was quite satisfactory. The boys all took kindly to the stories and said they were "fine" though the boys in the stories were "awfully good" and "there was not quite enough fighting,"they liked "The Age of Chivalry" better. The result would no doubt have been even more favorable with girls, and Maria Edgeworth has proved her right to live.

A Colonial Free Lance3

A Colonial Free Lance, by Chauncey E. Hotchkiss, is as full of adventure as any of Stanley Weyman's panoramas of hairbreadth escapes. The period dealt with in the life of the intrepid Free Lance, is a constant succession of events calling out all his daring, courage, and quick wit. He plunges into danger, fights against enormous odds, and in a truly marvelous manner overcomes apparently insurmountable obstacle whether of Nature or man's devising.

CHAUNCEY E. HOTCHKISS

Occasionally Nature comes to the assistance of the hero in his sore straits; and then Mr. Hotchkiss gives some unusually fine descriptive writing. The earthquake scene, for instance, is very graphic.

Perhaps one of the cleverest things about the book is the geographical interest which is added to it by using, quite as a matter of course, the old and now disused names, in describing routes and localities; and then in a simple manner telling what is there today. To read of some one taking his life in his hands, and in the face of unknown perils plunging into the wilderness to reach a point that is today in the heart of New York city, is curious not only to those who are acquainted with New York, but to every American, as giving a vivid idea of the growth of the whole country.

No one after reading this book, can feel that the romance of history is confined to countries that had a past when our country was yet unborn; and our thanks are due to Mr. Hotchkiss for showing that American history is not so "uninteresting" as it has been the fashion with some to consider it.

3A Colonial Free Lance. By Chauncey E. Hotchkiss. New York: D. Appleton & Co.: 1897. Price, 50c.

Studies in the Thought World, or

Practical Mind Art1

MR. WOOD in his Studies in the Thought World, does not ask his readers to forsake their mother tongue and adopt some esoteric jargon, nor does he demand that they insulate themselves from the scientific and critical thought of today. That he claims larger fields for the action of the mind over the body than most thoughtful men and women are wont to grant, does not mean in his case a wandering into hopeless vagaries. Even when not convincing, the conclusions are the results of careful thought, not soothsaying. The style is refreshing in its direct vigor and the thought is heartening to one's courage. The tone of the book is profoundly, though not popularly, religious.

Success is for You?

THE gospel of cheerfulness is spread all through Dorothy Quigley's Success is for You, and it should be a "table book," ever ready to be taken up by the melancholic and the discouraged. Success is not for you if you take life hard and bitterly.

"You are either a magnet that attracts all things bright, desirable, helpful, healthy, and joyous; or one that draws all things disagreeable, gloomy, undesirable, and destructive."

"You are either a success or a failure,- or you are neither one nor the other, which is almost as bad as a failure. If you are not a success, it is imperatively urgent that you should discover why you are not for Success is for You."

We could quote pages of bright nuggets from this little volume, but we can only say to our readers,buy it, read it, and thank us for the suggestion.

3

Hot Shot at America

AMERICANS who enjoy seeing their national shortcomings and peculiar weaknesses held up to the gaze of the world will without doubt relish America and the Americans, an anonymous work which purports to have been written by a Frenchman. There is nothing in it that suggests a French point of view, however, and the reader will after a perusal of a half dozen chapters put the book down as the work of a clever American reporter. The writer is a shrewd observer, and from the opening page to the finish he pours hot shot into our body politic and social. He points out many democratic extravagances that our form of

Studies in the Thought World, or Practical Mind Art. By Henry Wood. Lee and Shepard: Boston: 1897. Price $1.25.

2Success is for You. By Dorothy Quigley. E. P. Dutton and Company: New York: 1897. Price $1.

3 America and Americans. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 1897. $1.25.

government seems powerless to reform, and contrasts many of our customs unfavorably with like practises in England and on the continent.

The book is amusing and readable, and in many instances, unfortunately true.

Recent Verse. III

IT IS well that Mr. Gilder has gathered into one volume his contributions to patriotic verse.* The number is not large, only eighteen, and some of these very short, but the occasions for which they are written are great, the burials of Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, the unveiling of the battle monument at Trenton, army reunions, and Memorial days. The result is a colleclection of patriotic verse larger perhaps than that written by any of the poets of the generation since the war. It comes with special grace from a New York man; for New Yorkers have not always been credited with the kind of patriotic feeling which demands utterance in song. They have rather been supposed to consider such ebullitions countrified and old-fashioned, not to say jingoish and wicked.

Mr. Gilder's verse is so well known that it is unnecessary to praise it, the present volume holds up well to his work on other themes,- indeed the evident deep feeling and the exalted nature of the sentiment make it distinctly better than most of his poetry. Its keynote is perhaps best shown in the quatrain,

"NAVIES NOR ARMIES CAN EXALT THE STATE."
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ON HIS SEVENTIETH
BIRTHDAY

Navies nor armies can exalt the State,

Millions of men, nor coinéd wealth untold: Down to the pit may sink a land of gold; But one great name can make a country great. Echoes of Halcyon Days is a goodly sized book of verse launched by the author with the naive preface that the publication of the poems "is not attributable to a conviction that they contain aught that future generations will not willingly let die, nor yet to the thought that otherwise the Muses needs must mourn another mute, inglorious Milton; but is influenced partly by the promptings of perhaps overzealous friends, partly by the author's parental desire to congregate the mental offspring of a period antedating his embarkation on the 'bubble, toil, and trouble' of a professional career, a period redolent of laurel, reminiscent of love's young dream, replete with the Icarian aspiration of youth, and ever hallowed in memory." The author was evidently not deeply harrowed or stirred during his poetdays but his verses are cheerful and pleasant,— somewhat didactic, perhaps, but showing care in construction and refinement in taste.

4" For the Country." By Richard Watson Gilder. New York: The Century Company: 1897.

5 Echoes of Halcyon Days. By Maximus A. Lesser. Hartford: Truman Joseph Spencer: 1897.

Or better quality and of more intellectual insight are the verses which make up Frye's The Substance of His House. They are more somber in view but are not especially pessimistic. Is it because that particular class of feelings has come to be associated with poetry that so much dreary verse is put upon the market? Or is it that it is easier to be melancholy about life than to be glad? It would seem the latter from the output. Mr. Frye, however, never loses his grip on his feelings. There is no indecorous outburst of grief or disappointment. Over his work there is always a repression that is almost artificial

as if

he had thought so long and carefully over his phraseology that his spontaneity had suffered. This, however, is not altogether a fault. It is really a comfort to come across so scholarly a book, and a pleasure to find a sonnet as good as the following, entitled "Rest":

Like one who wakens from a dreamless sleep.

And hears the water dripping from the roof And sees running across the night's black woof The silver threading of a star; while deep With peace his spirit lies and will not keep

Grasp on the past that seems so far aloof Now when the day's stern task and trying proof Uplift a space, and he has ceased to weep.

As such an one awakens into calm;

So would I waken one time after life,

A single instant when death's pangs are o'er To feel my utter freedom from the strife And my release from every fear of harm

Then turn into my sleep forever more.

THE little volume entitled Sonnets and Other Verse2 by Mrs. Isadore Baker contains between its paper covers some verse much better both in quality and in finish than that found in the more pretentious volumes. It is smooth and melodious, and not erratic or of uneven finish.

3LYMAN H. SPROULL is a Colorado poet, and his muse has caught some of the breezy openness and largeness of his mountains and cañions. He is very uneven, however, and often by a line or phrase or unfortunate word, destroys the effect of an otherwise acceptable poem. Colorado, too, is too far West to father a poet who pronounces cayote in two syllables and spells piñons, pinions.

SEVERAL volumes of verse have been received which do not seem to be entitied to individual treatment. They are all hopelessly mediocre, and except for the fact that they gave pleasure to their authors in the

1The Substance of His House. Poems by Prosser Hall Frye. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York: 1896.

2Sonnets and Other Verse. By Mrs. Isadore Baker. Iowa City: 1896.

3Camp and Cottage. By Lyman H. Sproull. The Editor Publishing Co.: Franklin, Ohio: 1896.

writing have no real excuse for being. Most of them are merely rhythmic prose with a strain on much of the rhythm. Occasionally there is an oasis of real feeling or imagination, but not enough to entitle the author to characterization as a poet. Their titles are given below. 4

Educational Books

PACIFIC COAST people have been spoiled so far as books on geology go by the work of Professor Joseph Le Conte. His books deal directly with our own region and its problems in so many of their illustrations, that we are apt to look with more languid eyes on other geologies. But there is more than that,his writings are so filled with his own philosophic spirit and so clothed in his vivid literary style that the facts he tells are given a vital meaning. They are no longer simple, dry-as-dust bits of information, ticketed and put away in the proper pigeon hole of the memory, but they are parts of a great organic system, having relation to all that was and all that is.

For this reason we find it hard to judge of Professor Scott's Introduction to Geology. The significant facts of the science are all there, and all in their proper order and relation, but we miss the life. It is possible, no doubt, to read it into them, and knowing how to do this, to read with pleasure, but we do not see how any student, coming to this book as in reality an introduction, can find geology anything less dead than its fossils. The book has the materials of the science, but not the science itself.

The illustrations should have a word of praise, they are carefully chosen and markedly good.

Fragments of Roman Satire is of special interest and value to classical teachers and scholars. The selections are from Ennius, Lucilius, Varro, Petronius, Seneca, and Apuleius, authors less known and read than Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, in this interesting field of study, simply because their writings are not easily accessible. In this book we have a collection of rare fragments never before included in a single volume, and it is hoped the the survey of the rest of the field of Roman Satire may be helped by the publi

4Zenobia and Other Poems. By G. H. Thornton. Griffith Publishing Co.: San Francisco: 1897.

Rosemary and Pansies. By Evol Rue. New York: Authors' Publishing Association: 1897.

Song and Fable. By Barton O. Aylesworth. The Kenyon Press: Des Moines: 1897.

Laying the Hero to Rest. By Edward Doyle. Up Town Visitor Publishing Company: New York: 1897.

5 An Introduction to Geology. By William B. Scott. New York: The Macmillan Co.: 1897.

6Fragments of Roman Satire. Selected and arranged by Elmer T. Merrill. American Book Company: New York 1897. Price 75 cents.

cation in this convenient and inexpensive form of selected portions of the work of the authors represented. The text of the selections is from accepted editions and is printed from type which makes the page a delight to the student and booklover.

MR. LANGE has struck on some very good things in his series of Language Pamphlets,1 and perhaps the best of his points is his method of making the difficulties seem small by going into them gradually and with an air of confidence that inspires the learner. That is quite necessary in a book designed for home study and gives Mr. Lange's work a decided merit. Spanish is so far the mother tongue of California, and a knowledge of its pronunciation at least so necessary in this State of Spanish names, that it should be given a much wider preference than is shown it in our schools and academies. But, alas! it is not often taught, and even in the Universities it is rather sidetracked for French and German. For this reason Mr. Lange's books for self instruction are of all the greater value.

2

In the Public School Arithmetic, the author has left the beaten track somewhat by re-arranging some of the topics and by presenting a new terminology in a few places. In the latter respect, little is gained. In fact, the term, "Comparison of Numbers," is an unfortunate substitution for the term, "Analysis." Too little space is given to the fundamental calculations which involve about ninety-nine per cent of the practical computations of every day life, while too much is given to the subject of interest, under which title the author retains the rubbish, Brokerage, Stocks, etc., which have so long cumbered text-books to the useless confusion of students. Square Root is given its proper place following the four fundamental operations; and the subject of Mensuration is very happily confined to problems of surface measure.

3

In the year 1894, startled and frightened by the everywhere increasing popularity of vertical penmanship, and imagining that writers of the Spencerian school had fallen short in some particular which he could not discover, the author of the Farrian System of Penmanship attempted to supply the deficiencies and atone for the short-comings of all of his predecessors and contemporaries. In doing so, he actually found material sufficient to fill a volume of 135 pages which he devotes to a discussion of every possible detail details long since worn so threadbare as to tax

Lange's Language Pamphlets. Introduction to Span ish By Louis Lange. The Pamphlet Publishing Com pany: Monterey: 1897.

2 Public School Arithmetic. By J. A. McLellan, A. M. LL. D., and A. F. Ames, A. B. Macmillan Company New York: 1897.

3 Farrian System of Penmanship. J. W. Farr.

the most inventive and industrious patcher in his efforts at repairing. Then, lest there still be an obstinate doubting Thomas here and there, he makes the astounding discovery that "The chief difference in the two methods of writing is: That the former, the oblique, is written sloping (52°), while the latter method is made vertical (90°), making a difference of 38°."

So calling "all of the same faith and practise" to his aid, he marshals them around in front of his own inclination, and "with a long pull and a strong pull, and a pull all together," he pushes his system up on end and then very complacently says, in effect, to the writing public: Now you can take your choice. Such is the ironical conclusion of the hopelessly discouraged.

Briefer Notice

EVERY boy in the land will be interested in the stories of Daniel Boone, the great hunter of Kentucky; John C. Frémont, the pathfinder; Kit Carson, the famous hunter and scout; and Lewis and Clark, who explored the great unknown country west of the Mississippi in 1804 and were the first white men who traveled down the Columbia river from its source to its mouth. These are briefly told in Stories of American Pioneers. The book is printed on heavy calendered paper and is beautifully illustrated.

4

In the Tideway" is a regulation English story with the "Macleod of Dare" plot modified to suit the Hebridean landscape and with other minor changes,- not however omitting the drowning of the unhappy heroine. The Scotch of the book is not over hard for even an OVERLAND critic to understand,- for it is to be expected that in the Hebrides one should sit to rest in "a bieldy bit by a burn," whatever that may be. The power of Mrs. Steel's Indian stories is, however, quite lacking.