CLASSICS

"ASK MAMMA." By R. S. Surtees, author of "Handley Cross," etc. A new edition with sixty-nine wood cuts by John Leech and thirteen colored illustrations. 525 pp. 12mo. D. Appleton and Co.

Leech's drawings are the chief interest in this reproduction of a novel which appeared in 1858, devoted to the sporting life of the period in England just after the Crimean War, in the intermediate period when English society was still small enough for individuality, but had begun to feel the wide expansion in numbers and wealth which has transformed it during the past generation.

MISCELLANEOUS

COPYRIGHT CASES. Compiled by Arthur S. Hamlin. 237 pp. 8vo. G. P. Putnam's Sons. This summary of American Copyright Law gives all the decisions since 1891 to 1903. It contains the text of existing law with its amendments and all decisions in English and Canadian as well as American Courts, throwing light on the same subject. The digest is arranged alphabetically. There are the usual references to cases cited. The book is issued by the American Publishers' Copyright League.

A small birthday memorandum book, about 22x2 inches, with two entries on a page and a motto, on the cover, stamped with a feminine name as "Ruth," "Nancy," etc. OUR POLITICAL DRAMA, CONVENTIONS, CAMPAIGNS, CANDIDATES. By Joseph Bucklin Bishop. With Numerous Illustrations and Reproductions from Caricatures. 236 pp. 8vo. Scott-Thaw Co.

The author, a working journalist, editor of the New York "Globe," has gathered in a single volume, with additions, three magazine articles on national conventions, inaugurations and American political caricature. He has added to them a number of anecdotes, gleaned from a wide region, bringing together a varied picture of American public life in its national aspect during national struggles.

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Challoners, The. By E. F. Benson. $1.08, postpaid.

Christian Philosophy of Life. The. By Samuel Penniman Leeds. $1.25, postpaid.

Citizen's Handbook, The.

By Rupert S. Holland and Robert D. Jenks. Pennsylvania edition. $1.00, postpaid. Commercial Correspondence and Postal Information. By Carl Lewis Altmaier. 75 cents, postpaid.

Confessions of a Club-Woman, The. By Agnes Surbridge. $1.08. postpaid. Copyright Cases. Compiled by Arthur S. Hamlin. $2.00, postpaid.

English People, The. By Emile Boutmy. Translated from the French by E. English. $2.50; by mail, $2.68.

Interloper, The. By Violet Jacob. $1.08, postpaid.

Letter "H." The. By Charles Felton Pidgin. $1.08. postpaid.

Little Vanities of Mrs. Whittaker, The. By John Strange Winter. $1.00, postpaid.

Maria Edgeworth. By Emily Lawless. 75 cents, postpaid.

JOHN WANAMAKER,

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Meaning and Practice of Commercial Education. By Cheesman A. Herrick, Ph. D. $1.25, postpaid.

Money. By David Kinley, Ph. D. $1.25, postpaid.

North American Birds' Eggs. By Chester A. Reed. $2.50; by mail. $2.64.

Our Political Degradation. By Rush C. Hawkins. $1.50. postpaid.

Our Political Drama. By Joseph Bucklin Bishop. $1.50; by mail, $1.66. Physician Versus Bacteriologist. By Prof. Dr. O. Rosenbach. Translated from the German by Dr. Archilles Rose. $1.50, postpaid. Rosabel. By Esther Miller. 90 cents; by

mail, $1.01.

N the present swirl and eddy of the campaign, one is bound to take notice of politics. From its headquarters, both in Washington and New York, each party is breaking the back of the mails with tons upon tons of what the senders describe as "Campaign Litera

This literature is worth looking at, or if one may imagine ink as audible, listening to; since it is the voice of the campaign.

Politics is natural and not an artifice; it had its seeds in First Causes. It began with Man and will last while Man lasts. It is an expression of that conflict, irrepressible, unendable-the war waged by the Man against the Thing. On the First Day the morning sun shone slantwise across a field of original politics; the last rays of the Last Day's sun will fall upon politics. And since the issue is changeless, so, doubtless, the procedure will be changeless also.

Politics, that is to say practical politics, is the art of arousing the ignorance of mankind. One might suppose, since it aims at the interest, it would address the intelligence and the honesty of men. It never does. Its purpose is prejudice, and its methods lies. Hate, and love, and tribe-instinct, and the partisanship of region, and cupidity, and race-angers, and laughter, these are appealed to; the popular wisdom or the popular integrity is no more invoked than if it didn't live.

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To one with a taste for alcoves thoughtful inactivities, and whose interest in humanity is the mere interest of philosophy, a campaign is like a great play, whereof the literature forms the actor's lines and printed parts. Also, the longer one sits at this drama of politics, the more one comes to justify those methods of unintelligence which have been recounted above. Prejudice and cupidity are sharply quick to seize and to act; reason is a fumbler, a blunderer, a snail for being slow.

Interest in the sense of personal advantage is stronger than prejudice, and the latter in its turn is stronger than partisanship or tribe-instinct. Here is a case: With the jealousy of region, the Southern people loved Mr. Roosevelt because his mother was of the South-he was a member, or at least a half member of their tribe. There was tribe-instinct. Then Mr. Roosevelt had the Black Man to dinner, and the South fell upon him ferociously. There was prejudice. Later, Mr. Roosevelt inaugurated the Panama

Canal, so hopeful of a Southern moneygood, and the South began to take a kindlier view of him. There was self-interest.

One of the most powerful levers when one would move humanity in the lump is laughter. Men are apt to vote as they laugh. History has many such instances. Sixty-five years ago Tom Corwin was named against a gentleman who had served several terms in Congress, and was regarded as invincible. No hands of reason had been found strong enough to haul him from his pedestal. It was in a primitive day, and any spectacle of luxury inflamed the yeomanry as red flannel inflames a turkey gobbler. The ingenious Corwin charged his wealthy and superfine opponent, with the crime of Nightgowns. He explained how the rude peasantry might file away their weary frames at nightfall between hickory sheets, all undefended of any effeminacies of cambric. His delicate opponent, however, too sensitively fine to fare as fared his honest, poor constituents, must fain protect his dainty slumbers with a nightgown. It was called the Nightgown Campaign, and Corwin went over the once invincible one like a landslide.

Here is another example. Representative Clover came up to Congress from the sunflower country, being one of nine Populists elected to that House. He came on the argument that Republicanism and Democracy, narrowed of forehead and blinded of eye, and shriveled of heart, could no more be trusted as watchmen on the walls of Government. One day when finance was a tie in the House and silver saved from slaughter only by the Speaker's vote, Clover lay snoring on at sofa in the Republican cloak-room, and missed the roll-call. The Republicans were kind and let him sleep. Later Jerry Simpson and Lafe Pence, eminent among the Jack Cades of that hour, published that somnolence, and Clover was cut down. Clover had been charged with mendacity, and it went by him like the idle wind; he had been pointed to as a hypocrite, and it did him no scathe; they showed him sleepy, and he perished.

Campaign literature is meant to intercept the herd, and lead it in its drift of politics. Men in their vote-wanderings

are as hard to account for as were the buffaloes in their migrations. And yet the buffaloes might seem to have had the better wit, since at least they went North in the summer and South in the the winter, while men in their vote-journeyings do just the reverse. It would look, now, as though the West, which borrows money, would insist upon borrowing the best money. Yet the West is for silver. It would look as though the East, which lends money, would be willing to lend the worst money. Yet the East is for gold. Also, four decades has the farmer been the pillar that supported Protection; and of all between the oceans the farmer was that one for whom Protection did the least and cost the most. Lest he discover that fact, the literature of the campaigns told him to "vote as he shot," and in remembering old battlefields he forgot the mortgage on the farm.

In turning over the literature of a campaign one finds it made up of committee reports, Congressmen's speeches, editorials from the daily press, news stories from the same wellhead of misinformation, magazine articles, original pamphlets and kindred types-and-paper whatnot. Most of it, from any standpoint of humor, is about as brilliant as a pan of dough. As a study in bad English it is interesting; adjectives abound, and the last things to worry the violence of our authors are questions of number, tense and Nominatives and objectives, pasts, presents and futures, plurals and singulars, are jammed together, hit or miss, and rendered angry by this rough usage, they often combine to make a scene of

case.

rhetorical mob violence where law is defied and riot alone prevails.

As you run over the pile you will obinto sort and kind. serve how campaign literature separates There come docuwho read are invited to bring their ballots ments of "gratitude" kind, wherein those to a certain man or party because the man or party once did something the result of which is charged against the readers as a benefit. One finds "Cupidity" documents, in which the readers are asked to part with their votes in favor of a man or a party because the man or party is about to do something by which the readers will benefit in their pockets.