should work for the common end of the common good. It is so simply and plainly written that its abstractions seem quite intelligible to the simplest reader and only a little patience is necessary for those who would understand a new philosophy. Henry Holt & Co.

Mr. S. D. Wood's "Lights and Shadows of Life on the Pacific Coast" is the story of one who made the voyage around the Horn in 1849, going as the son of a missionary sent by the Presbyterian Board. He grew up literally with the State, rose to eminence and official position, assisted in all the important political movements of the last fifty years, and tells his story authoritatively and clearly, making a very valuable book. Mr. Wood's political activity did not shut him out from literary society or prevent him from frequently visiting the theatres and becoming acquainted with many actors. There is no side of the Californian life of his time of which he has not much

to say. Funk & Wagnalls Co.

In the twelve stories included in his "The Gold Brick" it is understood that Mr. Brand Whitlock has coined the experiences of certain years spent in polities, and now gives them to his fellow-citizens as lessons in reality; lessons showing how political events may be overruled for good, and by what narrow chances success may be snatched from defeat. They are good lessons, well-fitted to teach the learner to be always vigilant in watching for the selfish treachery which for a time defiled American politics and bade fair to destroy their early wholesome simplicity. Also they are good reading for a true-hearted boy, and two or three of them show that even in politics there may be opportunity for such an one to perform feats worthy to be compared with that of him whose lit

tle hand, pressed against the creviced dyke, stayed the encroaching sea from his mother-country. They are good tales, and Mr. Whitlock is to be envied for having written them. Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Miss Katherine G. Busbey's "Home Life in America" is a wholesome book for Americans, quietly stripping American life of its affectations and disguises, but without pretending that similar appendages are not affixed to the character of every nation. Its distinctive trait is fulness and elabora tion, and it seems hardly possible that the author should have overlooked a point of character. Naturally, true criticism of such a work is possible only by writing another of the same size and minuteness. All that can be done here with this is to say "Here is a mirror in which we may see ourselves at every point as others see us, and set their judgment against our own." Nothing but profit can come from the exercise, for Miss Busbey is thoroughly well-informed, cool, dispassionate, unprejudiced and logical. Her book takes its place among the little new library of books not to be neglected by him who would keep up with the movement of civilization. It is true that there is not a point in the whole volume to be settled by discussion, but books of this sort are not written to bring about settlements, but the measureless content of thorough discussion, productive of ideas. The Macmillan Company.

The trick of linking together two entirely unrelated propositions in such a way that they seem to have the relation of cause and effect was invented long before the day of "Jennie Allen," but has lately been so effectively employed in her "letters" that one is compelled to remember her when one encounters the trick in Miss Kate Trimble

And

Sharter's "The Annals of Ann," but Ann is no gentle young needlewoman, the light of her family circle, but a cool, pitiless, very young girl who, contemplating her family circle, tells what she sees. She has the good trait of loving her parents, but it would be exaggeration to say that she has any respect for them, and a wicked satisfaction in her naughtiness is the whole source of one's pleasure in her. pleasure one does have, and it is to be feared would have if she were speaking of real persons. As she and her subjects are equally imaginary it would be too fastidious to refuse to laugh at them. Possibly it may be a good lesson for those elders who fancy themselves objects of respect not to say of terror to the young to let "Ann" show them how they really are regarded. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

After the Kentucky Colonel, the Missouri Colonel, with Mr. Ripley D. Saunders as his sponsor, "Colonel Todhunter of Missouri," and a charming person he is. An eloquent speaker with a strain of shrewdness which serves him well before a political meeting. A politician perfectly versed in the internal affairs of his State and in the traits of his fellow citizens, he is a valuable friend and a dangerous enemy, as he demonstrates almost incessantly from the beginning to the end of the book. But not alone as a politician, but as a matchmaker, and general manager of his friends' affairs does he shine, and—although the plot boasts a hero, a heroine, and villains, private and public, Col. Todhunter is felt to be the only absolutely necessary personage, and, having once made his acquaintance, nobody is going to forget him. After once seeing him lead a happy pair to the altar it is not to be expected that his readers will be content until they renew the experience. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Miss Louise R. Jewett has done American literature a genuine service in editing "The Poems of Sophie Jewett," the memorial volume prepared by the author's literary executors in answer to a demand coming from many quarters; for Miss Jewett was a genuine poet, and in her vocation as Wellesley Instructor in English Literature she had taught many to love poetry, and they loved her for her work and also for her teaching. Travel, study, and many long visits had made Italy dear to her, and it is not strange that many of her subjects should be Italian and that she should have essayed a translation of "The Daughter of Jorio," unhappily left unfinished, but her original work was truly lyrical. Her devout verse was admirable both in spirit and in form, and her elegies, best test of the poet spirit, ring true and clear. She was not young as years go, when she died in 1909, but they who knew her or even her work will always think of her as young, and as always in sweet humility striving to learn of all other singers, and winning her desire. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

Mr. Kipling once scoffed at the men who said that romance was dead, and showed that romance was the directing power behind every minutest cog and spring in all the seemingly prosaic machinery of the world, and who has said him nay? Now, however, it has come to the point when men seem inclined to worship their machinery with all their soul and all their might, and the result is some rather extraordinary fiction. Miss Eleanor M. Ingram's "The Flying Mercury" is a very good specimen of it. The book is a little drama of a motor car race written in that spirit of enthusiasm which Mr. David Gray, Charles Reade, Mr. Hopkinson Smith and a few others evoke by their descriptions of the contests of men and

of animals. A race is to be run and from obscurity comes a wonderful driver, holding the hearts of all who love the motor car in the hollow of his hand, and, by winning, shows the heroine's hard hearted father the wondrous inner spirit of the machine which he manufactures and the devotion which it exacts and receives from its driver. The behavior of the participators in a race is sufficient proof that Miss Ingram exaggerates their feeling but little if any, and it is curious to note that in this modern version of the antique chariot race the reckless cruelty almost banished from the race in which the horse is ridden has returned, and that the animating spirit of the vehicle is hardly attractive. It is impossible to deny that the story of the strife and triumph is as inhuman as a tale of racing demons might be and to make it truly attractive is beyond Miss Ingram's power. Bobbs-Merrill Co..

That most ungrateful creature, the novel reader who does not permit an author to have any favorite types, will be pleased with Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim's "Berenice," for it is neither a story of concealed crime nor a tale of diplomacy, and although its heroine is an actress it is less a romance of the stage than the story of a man's heart. The author has taken the fastidious and luxurious tastes which he has hitherto bestowed on men not on the side of the angels and given them to a modern Joseph Andrews, a Joseph of gentility, virtuous because vice strikes him as uncomfortable and ugly, and destructive of the tranquillity which he conceives to be necessary to the production of good literary work, his chosen vocation. This perfectly truthful statement of the case is nevertheless unjust, for, unworthy as seem the foundations of his virtue, they are strong to resist the woman whom he loves when she urges him to fly from

the world with her, against whom the world has sinned somewhat, inasmuch as it has given her a worthless and unfaithful husband. The distinction between him and Andrews is that he resists the temptress less on his own account than on hers, foreseeing her repentant unhappiness when she shall perceive that he has really ruined his art, to listen to her. This seems rather fine-spun, but Mr. Oppenheim has been very careful to give his hero every conceivable form of delicacy, mental and moral, and make his fastidious habits a natural and fine growth of his character, instead of treating them as unmanly defects, as he has rated them in former novels, and thus has produced a character new in fiction, not Galahad, nor Percival, for religion he has none, but as far as his fellow beings are concerned, he has something almost as good. At the point of his refusal, Berenice's escape with dignity seems impossible, but there is nothing of scorn in his rejection of Berenice, for even in the rejection he shows her a possible way of escape and thus is a book apparently on the verge of failure transformed into a triumph, and an apparently impossible personage shown as not only well conceived but as one of the best planned of Mr. Oppenheim's heroes. He conquers not only self, but self-deception, a much more insidious foe. Those who look no deeper than the surface may not see the real tragedy of his thwarted life, but it is none the less affecting because played amid luxury and elegance, and professional success. It is to be hoped that Mr. Oppenheim will see his way to further work in this vein. His touch is more delicate when he chooses than that of many a self-styled psychological novelist, and his latest hero will be remembered longer than most of his predecessors. Little, Brown & Co.