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had danced our first waltz. From that time on she and I were always partners for the waltz. Old Cady was proud of us. He gave us more attention than the others. The waltz, as taught by Old Cady, was not a jumping, hopping, Apache waltz. There was none of the horrid, awkward reversing. It was smooth and graceful. Annie and I became expert. We used to do all kinds of fancy tricks. She would whirl like a top under a wreath, or turn with a glass of water on her head. We even succceded in waltzing around the hall with a glass of water on the head of each of us. It was all play. As I look back, I think how happy we were then.

"I went off to college. My father gave me sage advice, and my mother enjoined me not to fall in love. 'You must get the cage before you catch the bird, my son.' When I came back in my first vacation, Annie's folks had moved away.

"I worked my way through college, studied hard, and stood well. I came West, I bought and sold town lots and homesteads, went to the Legislature, was Speaker of the House one session. I had been a candidate for Congress, and ran ahead of my ticket; but my party was in the minority. I was on one side of nearly every important law-suit in two or three counties near my home. Everybody said I was successful; I had made money, and was considered rich. When I started out, I kept to my mother's advice, and after I was able to build the cage, I did not want the bird. I had got to be an old bachelor.

“One winter I was at the capital attending the Supreme Court. The Legislature was in session. I was also charged by a railroad company in my part of the State to see that it was not hurt by hostile legislation. It was my business to know everybody, and everybody knew me. Fun of all sorts and amusements of every kind kept up high carnival. One evening a banquet was given at the leading hotel, with dancing in the grand dining hall. Of course, I went. Ev erybody went. Some of my people' were there. They had to be looked after, introduced to the notables, and made happy. There were many things to be watched. Intrigues are often laid in a capital on such occasions. I had never danced there. No one had ever seen me dance. It was to me a forgotten art. The new-fangled dances were an abomination to me. They are to all of us old fogies. I was busy, however, from one to another, chatting and listening to everything. All at once, a most queenly looking lady, magnificently dressed, came in, leaning on the arm of an elderly gentleman, and seated herself. A second look, and it was Annie, more beautiful even than she was a quarter of a century ago. I stepped over to her; she met me most cordially. She introduced me to Mr. Gage, my husband's uncle.' While we were talking, the band struck up a grand waltz.

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She rose, and I took her right hand, and she laid her left on my shoulder; her train swung out gracefully, and we began to spin aronnd the hall, and the memories of a quarter century began to spin through my head. The old flush came to Annie's cheeks, and the old luster to her eyes. We waltzed as easily as ever. As we danced, we talked. asked about this one and that one. We had a little word of each. I told her this reminded me of old times. She said, 'Yes.' I said: 'You dance as lightly, and look as beautiful as ever.' She blushed a little, I thought, and her big eyes looked up into my face. Do you think so?' So we went on dancing and talking, thinking of nothing else. It was a whirl, a fancy, a dream, an ecstacy. The music stopped. The spell was broken. Annie swung round to my side. Her left hand took my right arm naturally, and we stepped forward to cross the hall. We glanced around the room, and she exclaimed, 'Oh ! was there no one else dancing?' Sure enough; that was so. The faces of my friends were smiling a delight and a surprise. One enthusiastic one of them clapped his hands, and all around the room ran a little cheer. Annie looked at me; her face flushed, and then she tossed up her chin and glanced around the room like a queen.

"I must go now,' she said. 'We take an early train.' As we walked toward the grand stairs, I thanked her for the dance, and told her I had never danced the waltz since the old days. She said, 'Do you know, I have never waltzed with any one but you-strange, is it not? She gave me her hand at the foot of the stairs. 'Good bye,' and she turned, and walked grandly up. I stood there looking at her, and as she reached the landing, she turned her head and looked a smile down at me over her shoulder. As she turned away and faced the electric light, I thought-was I mistaken?--I saw a big tear-drop in her eye. My heart was thumping like a stamp mill. I strutted a little as I turned away, saying to myself: 'I could have won her.' Then I thought what a fool I had been not to catch the bird when I could and take chances on the cage. I would willingly give up every dollar I have, and every success I have achieved, and start life again from the grass roots,' at my age even, with Annie. The boys gathered around me; said it was magnificent. That everybody stopped dancing to watch us. 'Didn't know you could dance,' they said, 'then beat everybody.' They asked me lots of questions; but I got away as soon as I could. I didn't sleep much that night. I was thinking of Annie. I had not even learned her name, or where she lived. In the morning, which I thought would never come, I went to the register, and found that 'Mr. Gage and niece' had left. Annie had gone her way, and I went mine."

Letters to Dead Authors.1

BOOK REVIEWS.

In this book, Mr. Andrew Lang has clothed himself in his best prose. But this is doubtful praise, for he is not now speaking altogether from himself or with his own voice. His audience sit before him in the world, but his eyes look beyond them, and his words are thrown upward over their heads towards a line of illustrious ghosts, whom he sees in the galleries of the gods. To each of them he delivers a message from the ages they have left behind. He tells them, one by one, how posterity now regards him, with love increased or hatred abated from what had been felt on earth. With the most friendly painstaking, the living author criticises the dead, face to face, pointing out what the world has settled upon as mistaken, or overreaching, or something, perhaps, which it promises to preserve so long as itself shall last. And to many of them, he varies his voice to imitate their own, and delivers his message in the phrases of speech and tricks of words which each of them had so made his own that no man, now speaking to men, dares to imitate them. This art may be effective-it is effective--but it is bizarre. The curiosity of it in literature is not half so much that he has produced an excellent imitation, but that he has excelled his own best original work. There is the mocking-bird, whose stolen notes are its finest, but that has no say of its own. Mr. Lang has his own speech, and very good speech it is; but when he is at his best in livery, we may say that it is so only because he has not yet come to his best possibility, the fullest mental self-ownership. What is to be found, however, in this dainty little book, is an assuring promise of what he may give us hereafter, when he has fully come to his own. There is delicate wit here, and edged criticism, and outpouring of genial thought, and a soft lambency of fancy playing over every page, and making it a delightful picture. So we, the real audience, must say, for so we must feel. But-could a reply come from the ghosts themselves!" What short art is this, that attempts our ears from a forgotten world that we never knew or that never knew us? To us, years or centuries beyond the germinal beginnings of thought in that world, of what interest is it to learn what they, who know so little, think of us, now? Or, if a message must come to our uncaring ears, let it have the politeness of its own voice, and not remind us of the infantile tricks of speech which we do not now need for distinctive recognition. Tiptoe to us no more from a little shelf, striving to make us hear across

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worlds the echoes from our cradles. Settle back upon your feet, and send out your own voice level to those who care to hear you. That art alone is long--as length of days can be understood by you."

Signs and Seasons.2

THE general character and range of topics in John Burroughs's latest book may be seen from the titles of a few of the chapters: "A Sharp Lookout," "A Snow-storm," ," "Winter Neighbors," "A River View," "Bird Enemies," etc. The chapter entitled "A Spray of Pine," is a careful account of the characteristics and manner of growth of this familiar tree, and contains many facts which, although perhaps not new to the botanist, will be of interest, even if only to show the author's close observation of Nature. Life upon the farm, especially in the days when the hard work had to be performed almost entirely by hand, and the drudgery was relieved by those merry gatherings, now merely memories, called "bees,' 39 66 'house-movings,” and “raisings,” “huskings," etc., is treated in some detail in "Phases of Farm Life." The author writes of these from his own life so vividly that we can recognize them almost as clearly as he reproduces them to his own sight.

Nor has he neglected his favorites, the birds. In the several chapters devoted exclusively to them, he presents a side of the subject which has as yet received but little attention from our ornithologiststhe hardships and dangers of bird life. How few think of the sufferings endured by any but our fellow beings, during the severe storms or unusual cold of a northern winter! Yet, a moment's reflection will show that man is not the only sufferer. The birds and some of the animals, less able than he to cope with the elements, and relying for their daily sustenance upon what they may be able to pick up in the way of grain or seeds, are often reduced almost to the point of starvation, when the ground is covered

with snow.

This, and much more is brought out in the delightful chapter on "Winter Neighbors." Of all the many dangers to which our song-birds are exposed, the greatest are due, no doubt, to their natural enemies, the birds of prey, snakes, and a few of the smaller quadrupeds. Perhaps there is no way of computing the actual number destroyed by these agencies, but it is certainly very large. Our author would have us believe, however, that man is their greatest enemy, and, more specifically, that type of man which he styles a "collector," including, neces

2 Signs and Seasons. By John Burroughs Boston. and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

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sarily, in this term, all persons who make any "collections of birds or their eggs, for study or otherwise. He does not seem to recognize the fact that the true ornithologists are the birds' best friends, and that it is due to their successful efforts that the great trade in bird skins for millinery purposes, so destructive to bird-life, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It is very doubtful whether all the birds destroyed by human agency are more than a fraction as compared with those destroyed by natural agencies. Yet one is apt to get the idea from reading the chapter on "Bird Enemies," that the "collector" is, in fact, the arch enemy, and without pausing to sift the arguments or look for the other side, one is almost ready to concur with Mr. Burroughs's fierce generalization, that "the professional nest-robber and skin-collector" (his synonyms, it would seem, for the ornithologist) "should be put down, either by legislation or with dogs and shotguns."

Our gentle author is as charming in his description of Nature in her moods as in her organic life. No truer pen than his transfers to pages the rolling music of streams or the marshaled armies of clouds. But when he gazes upon the ocean, the Ossianic figure of Walt Whitman intrudes itself," with husky-haughty lips, O Sea!" and takes possession of placid John Burroughs, until he raves and welters as tumidly as the sea itself. But the next communion with Nature -fortunately on land, and a "Spring Relish"-frees our Sinbad from his old man of the sea, and he fares on through the valley of diamonds, as before.

Poetry as a Representative Art.1 Professor Raymond, Professor of Oratory and Esthetic Criticism at Princeton, has put forth a book under the above title. Art, he premises, consists in addressing the senses, through the agency of an artist, by means of re-presentation of the sights and sounds of nature. Poetry is no less re-presentative than other arts, its material being language, by which sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings can be reproduced to the reader's mind. This thesis, it will be seen, can be stated in a sentence, with sufficient demonstration to make the whole line of argument clear to an intelligent reader; a page would establish it in outline for any reader: or if it were desirable to fortify the position--sufficiently unquestionable though it would appear on the bare statement, taken broadly a chapter would amply suffice. In fact, we have some three hundred and fifty pages of metaphysical subtleties, elocution, and poetic criticism. It is all reasonably true, and perhaps not unimportant: but it is wearisome to an unusual degree. It is hard to guess who can be the readers of these three hundred and fifty pages; for there is really not enough of new or valuable thought to make it worth the stu

Poetry as a Representative Art. By George Lansing Raymond, Ph. D. New York and London: G. P. Putnam s Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland & Pierson.

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dent's while, and the general reader would be lost in their interminable chains of subtleties. Beginning with the fundamental elements of speech, the metaphysics underlying sound are analyzed, human activities are classified as "instinctive," relating to the body; "reflective," connected with the mind; and 'emotive," connected with the soul, which is the union of body and mind. Certain sounds of language express each of these activities. This is not as mere nonsense as it sounds, quoted by itself thus ; but it can be imagined how these subtleties, expanded into many pages, and made the basis of distinctions as to metres, vowel-qualities, rhymes, and poetic phraseology, dilute and impede the treatise.

There are many good points made in matters of detail, and we recall none that are altogether bad, though very many are fanciful, and over-emphasized. Thus, it is a good suggestion, that the effect of loudness in verse is produced by strongly marked accent, and this by long accented syllables with short unaccented ones, as in:

"Louder, louder, chant the lay;
Waken lords and ladies gay";
"When, wide in soul and bold of tongue,
Among the tents I paused and sung;

The distant battle flashed and rung."

'How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in his excellent word."

Sensible ground is taken, too, about the sacrifice of meaning to form in poetry, and, on the other side, the neglect of form. The chapters on rhyme and metre give a very fair realization of the extreme mechanical difficulty of writing good poetry, and the author says rightly that it is because of the exceeding difficulty of fulfilling all the varied requirements of thought and form, that there are so few great poets. Nor can we fail to find much that is worth con

sideration in many suggestions, at first thought overfanciful. For instance: since the nearer together rhymes occur the more rapid the movement, the inverted quatrain form used in "In Memoriam " serves the purpose of giving an air of meditative doubt and hesitation, through the retarding of the rhyme; in many stanzas it is possible to transpose the last two lines, and the illustrative instance given of four stanzas thus treated quite bears out Professor Raymond's observation, that the effect is to almost destroy the questioning, considering air of the origi nal form.

But the suggestive subtleties of analysis thus scattered through the book are not enough to reconcile

the reader to its tediousness, its accumulation of subtlety upon subtlety, its ineffective style-all to leave nothing in the mind at the end, but one definition of poetry as a representative art, and a not large number of rather interesting ideas on detail points in metrical analysis. We observe from the preface that the book is "only one of a series of essays," and constitutes only a sub-heading under "The Fact of Rep

resentation," to be preceded by a similar group of sub-heads, beginning "The distinction between Nature and Art," and to be followed by "The Manner of Representation," and "The Matter of Representation." The schedule of these works seems to promise some twenty volumes like the present.

Royce's California,1

Professor Royce's book is not a history of California. The series to which it belongs, as the collective title indicates, gives an account of American Commonwealths; and accordingly, the other volumes do give some account of the histories of these commonwealths. This volume will commonly be taken for an account of California. As such, and so understood, it will disappoint and misinform. It is in no sense a history, nor even an account of the State. It is a group of four studies on four short periods or phases in the history of the State, all between 1846 and 1856, almost as disconnected as if issued in four separate pamphlets; and the narratives, instead of being treated historically, are managed as texts for a running parallel sermon upon alleged qualities of the American character. Out of the whole tive hundred pages of the book, nearly two hundred are devoted to Fremont's doings in 1846, and the "Bear Flag" movement, with their immediate sequel; another hundred pages is a study in the philosophy of history, upon the order and disorder of the early mining period, 1848-1851; nearly as much more is a somewhat similar study upon the vigilance committees of San Francisco; and the last fifty pages are an outline discussion of California land laws and land title troubles.

The impression which is made by the book is of a piece of contract work, done under pressure, at short notice; as if Professor Royce, not having time to prepare a competent view of the history of the State, had done the best he could to make out a volume, by treating as carefully as possible such pieces of the State history as he could get into any kind of literary form under the circumstances. The bock, accordingly, has no just proportion among its parts, and has no unity of character except in its uniformity of sermonizing reproof of Americans. Not that there is any false pretense about this; the title page carefully gives as second title "A study of American Character," the preface sets forth the same purpose. But people pay little attention to such details. "Royce's history of California" is what the book will in general be considered. As such, it possesses little value. It is impossible to resist the impression of immaturity which is made by the author's mode of treating his subject, and by the diffuseness, sometimes the flippancy, and perhaps by other peculiarities of his

1American Commonwealths. California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco. A study of American character. By Josiah Royce, Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Harvard College. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. sale in San Francisco, by Chilion Beach.

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style. For instance: having expended some pages in a sarcastic exposure of the motives and conduct of one Ide, concerned in the "Bear Flag" movement of 1846, nearly a whole page is appended to expound the analogy between Ide's character and that of the Bellman in "The Hunting of the Snark." Now this personage is not famous enough for the purpose, and the result is an impression of bad taste and pedantry.

The space given to Fremont's first expedition and to the "Bear Flag" movement is entirely too great. One-tenth of it would have been ample. And the character of the exposition or exposure of Fremont's motives and action is an unpleasant sample of history writing; for Professor Royce, having repeatedly applied to General Fremont for information on the subject, and having been courteously and fully answered, as far as General Fremont could answer, then goes on to use the General's own statements somewhat as a judge on the bench might deal with a crooked witness in charging a jury. Combining the statements of the "gallant captain," as with tedious iteration he calls him, with evidence from the papers of Consul Larkin and other documents, he contrives, without any direct charges, to convey the idea that there was something discreditable in Fremont's purposes and doings, and that this character was in consequence of some private letter from Senator Benton to Fremont, which letter is not given, but only presumed. Whatever the character of actions or men, to imagine the contents of a private letter and then base charges on them, is not the way to make attacks nor to write history.

A broader misjudgment is the rather painstaking sermonizing which colors the whole book. The chief lesson which Professor Royce seeks to teach us is that which he repeats so often-of the bitter hatred caused and still existing between the Spanish and Mexican population and the Anglo-American population, in consequence of the crimes and oppressions which attended the transfer of California from Mexico to the United States. "Detestable meanness towards foreigners," "national bigotry in dealing with Spanish-Americans," and other similar phrases about rapacity, swindling, and violence-no doubt with some praise per contra-give the color to Professor Royce's estimate of his own nation. The impression given is, that the history of the transfer of dominion was marked with peculiarly vile and wicked traits, and that it has left its righteous consequence in a not unextinguished fire of race hatreds. Very faint today are any remaining traces of such hatreds. If they exist, they are traceable to causes more general and less discreditable than those alleged by Professor Royce; the record of the conduct of the Anglo-Americans in the "conquest "-as he calls it-of California, speckled as it may be with human faults, will compare favorably, at least, with any record of conquest of foreign territory, say, by the Spaniards, with whom he sympathizes so tenderly

Let Professor Royce study Las Casas a little. There are minor errors here and there. The phrase "James King of William" is not a practice of "new communities," but was transferred from the Southern Atlantic States; it distinguishes one James King from another James King. The word "one," used like the French "on," actually pervades the book: thus (p. 493), “To this end one took sides in national politics; one abused, for instance, all supposed abolitionists; one talked of Jeffersonian principles; one appeared as the champion of the people; or, above all, one manipulated party conventions,” besides five more ones in the next five lines. This is unidiomatic, awkward, and ambiguous English. But defects like this, along with other undesirable qualities of style, will naturally disappear with longer experience in writing history; and we advert to them for Professor Royce's good. It is hardly necessary to specify the verdict which must be given upon this book as a whole. It shows the results of considerable labor, and of good intentions; but both as literature and as history, it is, on the whole, a failure.

Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.1

MR. ROOSEVELT's book is a very pleasant descrip

tion of the life of a cattle raiser of the West, who is also an enthusiastic sportsman, and takes every opportunity that lies within his reach to enjoy the splendid hunting and fishing of that vast region. The author does not attempt to retail the big stories he has heard of the slaughter of game, but gives a bright and life-like account of a number of trips he has taken in search of sport, and also of the various chances that have come to him in the ordinary line of his business riding.

The peculiar charm to a sportsman in the country he describes is the freshness and variety of the hunting. The freshness is especially appreciated by one used to sport in the older portions of the country, where he has to outwit not only the natural keenness of faculties of the game, but also their generations of training in the wiles of man. His stories are not at all big; any tule hunter on the Sacramento could tell much bigger ones of wild fowl shot; but he could not persuade any one that his sport, from a soaking blind or a leaking float, shooting ducks and geese by the dozen at close range, was nearly as enjoyable as that here described, by clear streams and brooks and in autumn corn-fields.

Mr. Roosevelt is an enthusiastic student of nature, and brings before you a very vivid picture of the animals and places described. He says, in describing that most interesting, and little known, animal, the Rocky Mountain sheep, that of his own choice he takes to the vast, barren wastes of the "Bad Lands" as his home. "To all other living creatures, they are, at all times, as grimly desolate and forbidding as 1 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. By Theodore Roose velt, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

any spot on earth can be; in all seasons they seem hostile to every form of life." "In the raging heat of summer the dry earth cracks and crumbles, and the sultry, lifeless air sways and trembles, as if above a furnace." "In winter, snow and ice coat the thin crests and sharp sides of the cliffs, and increase their look of savage wildness; the cold turns the ground into ringing iron; and the icy blasts sweep through the clefts and over the ridges with an angry fury, even more terrible than is the intense, death-like, silent heat of midsummer." "But the mountain ram is alike proudly indifferent to the hottest summer sun as to the wildest winter storm." In size, the bighorn comes next to the buffalo and elk, being "larger than the black tail deer"; and yet, in spite of his comparatively large size, the mountain sheep is one of the most expert climbers in the world, and there seems to be no ground so difficult that he cannot cross it with ease, and no cliff, so long as it is not absolutely without fissure or break, that he cannot rush down in a succession of long leaps, or climb up with apparent ease. The bighorn, Mr. Roosevelt says, are fairly prolific, but never very plenty in any one place; they are the least liable to extinction of any of the large Western game, for very few are killed by hunters, and their pasture cannot be encroached on by other animals. He gives no support, by the way, to the old and well known legend of trappers, about the bighorn's head foremost leaps from high cliffs, to light on his horns at the bottom.

The illustrations, which are numerous, are most of them very fine, and carefully true to life.

Briefer Notice.

THE OVERLAND has spoken favorably of several of the books that the Putnams are reprinting in their Traveller's Series, and Canoeing in Kanuckia2 is worthy of the same praise. It was first printed eight years ago, and is now supplemented by an appended chapter, giving the improved devices that have come into use since the statesman, the editor, the artist, and the scribbler transformed themselves into the commodore, the vice, the purser, and the cook, on their memorable cruise. The joys, the adventures, and the mishaps withal, of the jolly fellowship, full of banter and fun, keep the reader in sympathy continually, and inspire a wish to follow so pleasing an example.- -It is not often that one can take pleas ure in the growlings of a dyspeptic, whose mind is forever on what he is to eat, and how it is going to disagree with him. For this reason, many readers will be repelled at the outset by Mr. Pearson's book. If, however, the reader can overlook this fault, and By Charles Ledvard NorTraveller's Series. New

2 Canoeing in Kanuckia. ton and John Habberton. York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. co by Samuel Carson & Co.

For sale in San Francis1886.

Flights Inside and Outside Paradise. By a Penitent Peri (George Cullen Pearson). New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

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