depths of his memory, and he recalled, step by step, all the way he had come: childhood, youth, manhood and age. He read with deepening interest the story of his life-all his thoughts, his words, the things he had done and left undone. And as he read he knew what was good and what was ill; everything was clear, not only in the unbroken record of what he had been, but in a sudden perception of what he was. At last he knew himself. And while he pondered one stood beside him, grave and calm and sweet with the purity that is perfect strength. Into the face which turned toward him, touched with the light of immortal joy, he looked up and asked: 'When shall I be judged?" And the answer came: 'You have judged yourself. You may go where you will.'

In philosophy, this is in line with o Omar's "Thou thyself art Heaven and Hell." In style it reminds me of the exquisite "Pastels in Prose" of the modern French classicists.

Outlook Co., New York, Price, $1.00.

Mrs. Henry Dudenay, who made a popular success with her book, "The Maternity of Harriott Wicken," is out with another interesting novel, "Spindle and Plough," in which she also draws a character whose most powerful attraction lies in the strength of her maternal feelings. Shalisha, the odd, boyish heroine, who has been professionally trained to be a gardener, and whose soul is as honest and noble as her boots are big, is not as thoroughly original a character in fiction as the author evidently intended her to be. To be sure, her trade is rather "up-to-date," and she wears knickerbockers while engaged in it, and with not half the grace of a Rosalind, but her indifference to her lovers, and contempt for the trifling occupations of her female relatives, are qualities with which many a lady novelist heretofore has embellished her ideal maid-the manliest she could manufacture. It is natural that Mrs. Dudenay should admire manly qualities, but why clothe them in a woman's form, and give us a being so dramatically strange

A New Woman from a British Pen.

and fantastic as Shalisha? It is straining a point and an arrant affectation to try to inveigle us into admiring a young woman because she wears ugly boots and men's trowsers. We really couldn't keep it up. We are pleased, of course, because she loves children, but all women do more or less, and need not grub in the soil in order to cultivate the maternal passion. In fact, we think the author of "Spindle and Plough" a little hard on her own sex. Never was a book better named, for Shalisha loves the out-doors, the work of the fields,. the feel of her own plough (which happens to be gardening), and it is long before she is won to domesticity and the spindle. But her spirit is as broad and rough in its strength as that of an intelligent peasant, and the types we are given of "the spindle women," to stand. beside her, suffer by comparison, and are surely the worst of their type. Her mother, Mrs. Pilgrim, is the weakest and prettiest of fools, enough to disgust any daughter, and of the other characters in the book none attract but that of Felix, the ranch foreman. The episode of Mr. Poundsberry, the lover of Mrs. Pilgrim, is very funny, though it seems unnatural. The charm of the book lies in its remarkably vivid sketching of English out-door life, its portrayal of the purity of Nature love and the smooth strength of style with which the really engrossing tale is unfolded.

Beautifully Told at Great Length.

In "The Lady Paramount," Mr. Henry Harland has written quite as charming a book as was "The Cardinal's Snuff Box." It is a delicately beautiful story, exquisite in setting and matter, told in a manner which is irreproachable and unapproached by that of any other writer. Mr. Harland's dainty choice of words, the poetry of his diction, are unequaled. The story is of a wonderful, spirited young creature, Susanna, Countess of Sampaolo, in whose Italian veins runs some English blood. When she is twenty-two and has become freed from the control of her guardians, she proceeds to carry out a long-cherished scheme. Taking the name of Madame

Torrebianca, she goes to England, and tc a certain country place in England, with the deliberate intention (yet always delicately expressed even to herself) of winning the love there of Anthony Craford, whose ancestors are the same as hers, but who according to her idea, has been unjustly deprived of estates which are now hers. Thereupon ensues the love story of the two, which is an idyl of green English lanes and gardens, always picturesqued by the high-bred, witty, passionate personalities of the English heir and the Italian heir to the estates of Sampaolo. Another character is the eccentric but lovable young Adrian Willes, "by vocation a composer and singer of songs, and contrapuntally" (his own words) "Anthony Craford's housemate, monitor, land agent, and man of business." No other people make anything but an infrequent appearance on the pages, though when they do come, each is distinctly drawn. Old Commodore Fregi, Susanna's guardian, is well done, and there is humor in the Italian brothers Baldo, who drive their four-inhand and rush from tennis to boating and back to tea in close imitation of the English. The figure of Susanna, alluring, dainty, haughty, beautiful, with a gentle humor, a sweet determination, is always fascinating. We should say that no one draws an aristocratic type with such understanding, subtlety and fidelity as does Mr. Harland. What Ouida of course could never do, long as she tried, he has done-done without exaggeration or over dramatic color, one of the most aristocratic types of Europe-one of those fair Italian countesses who reign in their palaces along the Adriatic.

"The Golden Poppy," the delightful little book gotten up by Professor Emory Evans Smith of Stanford University and contributed to by the best writers in the West, has already exhausted a first edition of 2,000 copies and is going into a second edition. In justice to the author I should like to explain that, due to an error, "California's State Flower," which appeared in last month's Overland Monthly under the authorship of Grace Hortense Tower, quoted very liberally

from "The Golden Poppy" without crediting the author. This mistake was due to the omission of an explanatory footnote which was intended to explain the source from which the information was derived. "The Golden Poppy" is covered by a copyright and its contents cannot be used without the consent of the author.

Two handsome volumes are contained in "Men and Memories," Personal Reminescences by John Russell Young, edited by his wife, May D. Russell Young. A biographical sketch precedes the chapters proper, which are full of reminescences of famous men and women, as Sumner, Blaine, Phillips, the Cary sisters, Edwin Booth, Robert Browning, George Eliot, Henry Irving, and many others. Of Mr. Young, who was appointed Librarian of Congress by McKinley, said that, "He knew public men on both sides of the ocean, with equal and familiar intimacy. Letters; the Stage; Politics; and the world of larger finance and administration, were all familiar to him.

Naturally the "Men and Memories" of such a man are well worth perusal. F. Tennyson Neely, Publisher. New York.

A work which should be in every Californian's library is "The American Fur Trade of the Far West," comprised in three volumes. It is a history of the pioneer Trading Posts and early fur companies of the Missouri Valley and the Rocky Mountains and of the Overland Commerce with the Santa Fe, by Hiram Martin Chittenden, Captain Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., and author of "The Yellowstone."

Published by Francis P. Harper. New

York.

"Windows For Sermons," is the name of a new book, by Dr. Louis Albert Banks, who has been the most helpful as well as the most voluminous "preacher to the preachers" now living. This last of his twenty published volumes reveals Dr. Banks' principles and methods in the use of illustrative materials for sermons.

г Oroville, Butte

County, has dawned an epoch that will revolutionize mining in the State of California. For more than fifty years a golden flow from various mining operations in Butte County has replenished the stream of general prosperity throughout the State. From the files of the "Oroville Register" we learn that Judge C. F. Lott, who has lived in or near Oroville since 1849, has made the following estimates of the fabulous sums mined in Butte from his actual and personal knowledge:

At Bidwell Bar, including both sides of the Middle Fork, to its junction with the North Fork of Feather River, from 1849 to the present time (October, 1897), $5,000,000.

Long's Bar, including Smith's Bar, White Rock, Cherokee Ravine, and both

sides of the river, to the junction of the North and Middle Fork of Feather River, since mining began, $17,738,000.

From Morris Ravine to mouth of Dry Creek, half a mile or more below Oroville, for the same period, $16,925,000.

From the Lava Bed Mines, adjacent to Oroville, worked from 1871, by thousands of Chinese with sluice and rocker, $27,000,000.

The total amount of gold extracted within five miles of Oroville, is given at $62,263,000.

Torrential streams have washed the gold for ages, from a thousand hills, into the great body of the Feather River, whose waters have distributed the treasure over miles of plain and valley.

To secure this, labor and ingenuity have advanced through a constant evolution from the most primitive methods

of mining, to schemes and experiments of gigantic magnitude. Some of these, for reasons that shall be set forth here, have failed. But the colossal digging machine-the gold dredger-is a success.

Pick, pan and shovel, the rocker, the string of sluice boxes with the "Long Tom" at the end, the ground sluice, which was ground broken up by pick and crowbar, or loosened by blast, then water carried by ditch or flume, confined by dam or reservoir, turned upon it, to wash the earth and gravel through the sluices, and catch the gold in the riffles.

C

Many of the earlier miners did not prepare for the ground sluice, by ditch, flume or dam, but depended upon freshets during heavy rains. In the memory of the writer lives many a picture of the earlier ways of mining-men clad in rubber coats and boots that reached the hip, and "sou'wester hats," frantically delving in a blinding rain to rush their store of earth through the boxes, while they might yet utilize the forces of the storm.

And another: a string of sluice-boxes in old Dixon Ravine, which is a tributary to Oregon Gulch, a man and boy bending to the shovel from early morn until set of sun, with only the intermission of the sweet, bright hour of early summer noon. A golden-haired baby playing on a blanket, spread upon the

dry bed rock; a woman, gentle, refined and beautiful, standing at the Long Tom, sluice fork in hand, through the long hours of the day, and a little girl, with dreaming eyes and dark brown curls that touched her waist, watching the baby, and waiting to "pick" the sluice boxes after the "clean-up" for the last "color" of gold.

Those were the days when, at the old Buffalo Ledge, one of the first quartz leads worked in Butte, under the dense shade of a spreading live oak tree, a dozen men or more sat all day upon the ground, and broke with stone hammers the quartz into pieces fine enough to feed the one-horse "arrastre" tediously grinding near.

With joke and song, these men of many lands worked and laughed the hours away. The sledge and stone hammers were soon replaced by the mighty iron stamp, whose ceaseless jar and rhythm waked the echoes in many a California canyon through succeeding years. The arrastre was increased in capacity a dozen fold, and the power of water and steam applied where muscle of man and horse had once sufficed.

The old time "ground sluice" was the forerunnner of the methods applied later to the stupendous working of the hydraulic mines, which ceased only at the edict of an unjust and unnecessary legisla