F

Camera*

ASCINATION, exhilaration, enthusiasm are the only words fitly describing the conditions of mind. through which one finds himself successively passing as he reads this book, the record of a camera hunter's adventures among the larger water fowl of the Atlantic coast. Mr. Herbert K. Job, the author, is well known as a lecturer and writer on the larger wild birds. An earlier book, "Among the Water Fowl," called forth a letter from President Roosevelt. which forms an introduction to the present volume. In this letter the President says: "There is altogether too much shooting, and if we can only get the camera in place of the gun, and have the sportsman sunk somewhat in the naturalist and lover of wild things, the next generation will see

*WILD WINGS. By Herbert K. Job. Illustrated. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

an immense change in the life of woods and waters.'

Our

In a postscript, however, Mr. Roosevelt adds: "But I am still something of a hunter, although a lover of wild nature first."

Mr. Job humorously describes his adventures in the marshes and morasses of the great Southern wilderness along the Florida coast. At night there would be but little sleep because of the armies of cockroaches and mosquitoes. As the pes tiferous mosquitoes formed the staple of conversation, the natives abbreviate the word to "skeets," as it takes too long to keep saying "mosquito."

The chapter describing the beetling cliffs, the thundering surges and whistling winds encountered on the excursion to Bird Rock in an open boat is positively thrilling. "The danger's self was lure alone," but there was also the tangible result gained of photographs of thousands. of Kittiwakes and Gannets nestling among the rocks.

A Novelist with a Style*

T

with

O read "Evelina" and then "A Dark Lantern" is to pass across whole seas of literary practice and fashion. The eighteenth century classic of Miss Burney portrays the London of her day. a certain formality and gossipy quaintness. The London of a hundred years later, how different it all is as drawn by our contemporary authors! Miss Robins is a student of George Meredith; she has acquired something of the Meredith way of fiction writing, with its subtleties, its delicate nouances and half-lights, its stress upon "incidents so minute, pictures so little imposing." As a leading interpreter of Ibsen, too, Miss Robins naturally excels in picturing the minuter, more elusive shades of temperament.

Miss Burney and her greater sister in letters, Jane Austen, should be read in the long, fragrant summer mornings beneath some old cherry tree or among the altheas and hollyhocks of an old garden. With an acquaintance and sympathy with their old-world charm how much finer becomes our pleasure in our reading of all later fiction. They are the touchstones of the art; as well hope to appreciate Stevenson without a knowledge of Defoe and Thackeray, as to appreciate our contemporary women novelists without entering the delightful realm under the care of the Burneys and the Austens.

Among the latest of our novelists, then, Miss Robins holds a secure place by reason of her delicate artistry and her making much of every slight detail of thought and conversation. It is all very much of our own time, this story of high life in London. Katherine Dereham, the fascinating Prince Anton of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein, the worldly Lady Peterborough and her scholarly, simple-hearted old Lord, and many like people are drawn with a skilled and unusual hand. Katherine's coming out is an early event in the book. The author's quality may be illustrated by this passage:

*A DARK LANTERN. By Elizabeth Robins. The Macmillan Company.

The night wore on in a dream. The debutante danced, and laughed, and learned through one avenue and another that no coming out for "long and long" had been so brilliant. Lady Peterborough was told that her god-daughter would be the rage-"She has a something"She is apart"She will set a new fashion in beauty." And Kitty had fallen in love with the Prince, she walked, all those early hours, in a land where a delicious vagueness reigned. . . It was enough to lower the eyelids and straightway see his face, to shut the ears against voices round her, and hear the rich eloquence, the all-sufficing promise: Auf Wiedersehen.

"ST

J. RUSSELL HAYES..

Man and Man* TURMSEE," like its predecessor "Calmire," is a rare book. Though not so strong as its companion volume, it will probably prove more readable than that work to persons who do not object to being stimulated to thought in this ingenious way. Both "Sturmsee" and "Calmire" are professed attempts by a writer of strong intellectual power and forceful English to present in well-fitting fiction dress the greatest moral and social problems of present-day America.

We take the author's prefatory remarks as a basis for criticism. Since both books are admitted to be books with a purpose, it is only just that we credit the author with a skilled handling of the accompanying story in each. "Sturmsee" is richer than "Calmire" in having two beautiful love stories of compelling interest instead of one. It is owing to the natural development of the two books that we find "Sturmsee" more absorbing in incident than "Calmire." For the former deals with the social relations of man with man, the latter with nature and man.

The author, in his new work, suggests evolution as Nature's remedy for the cure of social ills-evolution, not by individual inaction, but by the highest and best activity of each person. And the evolution of such activity, continues the author, depends no longer, it seems, on the evolu *STURMSEE. The Macmillan Company. *CALMIRE. Company.

New Edition. The Macmillan

tion of intellectuality and morality by way of physical fitness to survive, but on the development of these two powers by the growth of sympathy and generosity in the strong, fidelity and gratitude in the weak.

Of course, the curious reader of "Sturmsee" will want to place "characters" and "localities." This need not detain us. Nor do we think it profitable to discuss the question whether such a book will find readers. We believe that some readers will find it, and with great enjoyment and substantial mental good to themselves. We express the hope that the author will soon allow us to know to whom we are indebted for thought still very much in advance of these times.

Southern

T

HE troubles of humanity weigh heavily upon Miss Marie Van Vorst's peace of mind. She has gone so far as to become a housemaid and a factory-girl in order to gather material for novels that would place the true state of affairs before a large circle of readers. In the present story, a study of South Carolina mills and child labor, she makes out a strong case against the capitalist, and draws with a pathos that seems just slightly overdrawn the scenes of squalor amid which the poor of the South exist, with the din of the great factories in their ears, the whole twenty-four hours of the day, and the foul airs of unkept dwellingplaces, they cannot be called homes, in which these creatures of circumstance, sleep and eat and quarrel.

Into this atmosphere Miss Van Vorst puts a sad little fairy story, the life history of a girl who is adopted by a woman of wealth, is given the opportunities of education and refining influences, and then comes back to the place of her childhood, the last presumably for the sake of contrasting what is and what might have been in other cases, if conditions had been different.

The hero of the story is a drunkard, again a creature of circumstances, naturally intellectual and fallen from an estate approaching culture. Through all his dis

*AMANDA OF THE MILL. By Marie Van Vorst. Dodd, Mead & Co.

colored history, he is a gentleman at heart and the need of leadership among the mill people at the time of a strike awakes his better nature to a permanent command of his body. Unhappily married to a coarse creature of the lowest instincts, he falls in love with the girl who has been emancipated from these dire surroundings, and in order to bring about a happy ending to this romance, Miss Van Vorst is guilty of employing a most ordinary and melodramatic device.

The book is a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant reading, with the pathos emphasized, and it is marred throughout by stilted style and too much of the often unintelligible South Carolina dialect.

DR

Christian Socialism*

R. SHELDON has written this book as an advocate of Christian Socialism, but one does not have to be a Christian Socialist to appreciate it. It is full of meaty thoughts for better living, and its eloquent pleas for improvement in the conditions of the working man, are born of sympathy and an understanding of the human heart, which it is good to contemplate.

Dr. Sheldon deplores those phases of civilization which have made for so much unhappiness and discontent, and he finds his only solution of present-day problems in the more general reality of Christianity. For the exclusive Church he has little patience, though even into that institution, feeling and earnestness can, he believes, with proper effort, be infused.

The story he tells is of an Episcopalian minister, who writes a Christian Socialist novel, and through it is compelled to resign his charge. He begins his whole life over again, going among the mass of the people and talking and preaching to them, incidentally becoming the means by which the conversion of an eminent mill owner is brought about, thus illustrating the theory that religion is the one thing needful to effect the peaceable and mutually sympathetic relations of the classes.

Simply as a story, the book is excellent, well-planned and enthusiastic, moving

*THE HEART of the WorLD. By Charles M. Sheldon, author of "In His Steps," etc. Fleming H. Revell Company.

quickly and smoothly to the end. Incidentally occur miniature sermons which will be carefully perused by the earnestminded reader, who will find them replete with interesting ideas and views that contribute something of additional value to the sociological literature of the day.

A Gem Novelette*

N the field of the novelette, Mr. Tarkington shows at his best. He expends an artistry upon the shorter piece of fiction that is not to be approached by any American author writing to-day. He has learned to polish; and polish applied to an original situation is most likely to end in something worth contemplation.

The singular episode upon which this little story hangs at once arrests and keeps in custody the attention. The masterly play of humorous and pathetic emotion, the delicate satire and the secure touches of characterization all go to make a volume that leaves pleasant memories of its perusal. One feels reluctant to lay it aside, yet is convinced that a loss would have been involved in a further expansion. Only a glimpse of Paris life, a dinner in Italy, a beautiful American girl and the son of an American millionaire, a Neapolitan prince and his scorned half-brother ;—Mr. James might have vainly devoted two volumes to a treatment of this theme, in "tidy" English; Mr. Tarkington uses literary English and wastes no words—each scene, each person, counts.

H

Picturesque Spaint

APPY the choice that fell upon picturesque Spain for the scenes of this tenderly pathetic love story. Mr. Gwynne has stepped away from the conventional main thoroughfare of fiction and, being in love with Spanish scenery and the charm of rural Spanish life, has laid a romance among the simple people of that warm Southern land and the dashing bandits of its mountain fastnesses.

Clever invention managed a plot not too complicated but affording ample room for action. A nobleman's kidnapped son *The Beautiful LADY. By Booth Tarkington, author of "Cherry," etc. Illustrated by Blendon Campbell. McClure, Phillips & Co.

THE BANDOLERO. By Paul Gwynne. Dodd, Mead & Co.

is reared in a peasant's cottage and falls in love with the daughter of a daring bandolero, his father's bitterest enemy and his own abductor. He becomes a noted matador, and in conclusion the entanglements are unraveled and the romance brought to a pleasant consummation.

Pictures, drawn with sympathy and familiarity of touch, show Spanish city life; the peasant at home and in the field, and the bandit camps in the mountains. The influence of these marauders over the people is given prominent treatment, and the popular bull-fight, indispensable in a story of the kind, is graphically described.

Mr. Gwynne manipulates English with skill and a care for neatness and exactitude. His descriptions are delightfully clear and realistic. His task has been accomplished with enthusiasm and a wholesome pleasure in the subject. This pleasure is transmitted to the reader, who enjoys thoroughly the time spent with the book in old-fashioned Spain, that fascinating land of scarlet and gold and uncontrolled passions.

S

Japanese Patriotism*

IDNEY MCCALL barely escapes the Archibald Clavering Gunter style in this new story. He has crowded a remarkable series of events into some three hundred pages, and has finally fallen into an unhappily tragic mood that makes the last part of the tale doleful in the extreme.

The scenes move from Washington and the home of a United States Senator, just appointed to a diplomatic office in Japan, to Japan itself. The foreground figures are supplied in a Japanese family, the daughter of which has been educated in America and is the firm friend of the Senator's daughter, but who has committed the terrible crime of falling in love with a Frenchman. Japanese patriotism in all its fanatical madness, is here pictured vividly, and the girl is literally forced to marry a Japanese prince. The Frenchman, beside himself at this turn of affairs, steals papers of high value to the Japanese government, and in order to secure them again, the Prince promises to

*THE BREATH OF THE GODS. By Sidney McCall, author of "Truth Dexter," etc. Little, Brown & Co.

give Yoki-Ko to her lover. The promise is a trick. The girl is delivered according to the agreement, but she is dead, a suicidal sacrifice to the cause of the nation.

We have no doubt that the author has made a study of the situation, but the plot has too many stock features to permit of artistic treatment. Those who are eager for information of the plucky little country which now holds the centre of the world's stage may gain something from the book; they will at least be able to comprehend a little the spirit that has made such astonishing recent historical developments possible.

A Prize-Fighter Hero*

Mr. London idealizes the lower classes of society. Joe and Genevieve are working-class aristocrats. They seem scarcely more than children, and life is but play until that fatal encounter. It is very sad, but very sweet. The spirit of youth in it exhilarates; the shadow of death convinces, but one wishes with all one's heart that Joe had resigned the game first and taken his chance at happiness while the chance was his.

A Thrilling Scientific
Theory t

T is quite possible that Mr. Vincent Harper really believes that he has written a psychological novel. If so, we recommend him to read Mrs. Wharton and find out what a psychological novel is. We trust that he had no serious

purpose in manufacturing "The Mortgage on the Brain," for, aside from being an exhibition of a certain kind of cleverness, the book is futile, to say the least.

*THE GAME. By Jack London. The Macmillan Company.

THE MORTGAGE ON THE BRAIN. By Vincent Harper. Illustrated. Doubleday, Page & Co.

In short, it is a book of cranks, of scientific cranks, whose expositions of wildcat theories bore the reader for pages and pages, the remainder of the volume being used up in the descriptions of experiments. by which a man's own personality is expelled from his brain and another personality is substituted, all with the idea of later effecting the cure of a poor, deluded woman, possessed of some two or three separate personalities, which are continually wracking her body with their struggles for the occupation of her mind's throne.

Personality, if you please, is the "mortgage on the brain," and we are told how much happier the world would be if all inconvenient personalities, those with tendencies to melancholy and wickedness and so forth, were driven from the brain upon which they have been placed, and the house of thought given over to some comfortable inhabitant. Of course, Doctor Ysanagas would have to be guaranteed to furnish these new personalities and to bolster them up with plausible histories, a full stock of ideas, a complete education, memories, etc.

Again we hope sincerely that Mr. Harper wrote the book as a diversion merely. As such it will pass.

Mischief in Peeresses*

N

OGGS is a lovable little soul and, like the Admirable Tinker, is nothing if not a matchmaker of extraordinary cleverness. The way she brings the uncle of her governess to terms in order that her grandfather's secretary may marry the girl of his heart, is quite worthy of the scion of a family of diplomats. Later, Noggs and Tinker, who again appears upon the scene, with Tinker's adopted sister, Elsie, contrive a kidnapping scheme that at once brings to mind the rescue of the little heiress whereby Tinker, in the other story, earned a neat little sum.

Mr. Jepson provides no end of amusement in these tales of mischievous but always well-bred children. They are suitable reading for the boys and girls, and at the same time prove delightfully interesting to the older people, too. Aside

*LADY NOGGS-PEERESS. By Edgar E. Jepson, author of "The Admirable Tinker." Illustrated. McClure, Phillips & Co.