tains, and the Kentuckian, in the company of some other college men, tried to take advantage of it. The result of that boom is that it made an author of the young man.

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"It's a fact," said the young novelist to us, once upon a time, that a stern sense of duty will make men courageous · - make heroes of them, even. I've observed that at Big Stone Gap. The Gap is in the Cumberland Mountains, Virginia, about twenty miles from the Kentucky line. I went down there some years ago with about thirty other college menmostly from Harvard and Yale and Columbia. The place was absolutely lawless. The men who were carrying on feuds there used to pursue one another all over the mountains and terrorize the people. Now, we were down there for business. So we organized a police force. I think there was nothing ever like it. We were something more than a vigilance committee. We each had a Winchester, a badge, and a club, and we each took turn in patrolling the town. When a citizen got too offensive, we marched him off to the calaboose; and at first the calaboose couldn't hold all our prisoners. If a man showed any disposition to defy us, we simply hit him on the head. The next day, perhaps, he would come to town in an orderly manner, and the very one of us that knocked him down and thrashed him would say 'Howdy' to him. That disarmed him of suspicion. He might have thought that we were bent on a wholesale feud, but when he found out that we let him have his own way so long as he was on his good behavior, then the great light of law and order came down upon him. In year and a half we had Big Stone Gap ideally quiet. A woman could walk around town at any time of the night or day and never be insulted. That's what a college police force did for a wild nest in the Cumberland Mountains.

"Outside of Big Stone Gap, the inhabitants, as a rule, live far apart. The mountaineer prefers to have his neighbors at least a few miles off. That was Daniel Boone's preference, too, you remember. When he found a family within some miles of him he moved farther West. His name, by the way, is borne by families in the mountains. I drew the character of Boone Stallard, in 'The Kentuckians,' for instance, from a young man named Boone Logan."

It is a remarkable feature of Mr. Fox's literary career that he has never had a manuscript rejected. His first story, bearing the felicitous title, "A Mountain Europa," was promptly accepted by the publishers of the Century Magazine when he submitted it to them a dozen years ago. Later appeared two collections of mountain tales, one entitled "Hell fer Sartain," and the other "A Cumberland Vendetta." His first novel was "The Kentuckians," which was first published serially in Harper's Monthly. The curiously abrupt ending of "The Kentuckians" has aroused much comment. Readers are left in doubt as to which of the two heroes, Marshall, the son of Kentucky blue blood, or Stallard, the sturdy mountaineer, is to win the daughter of the governor. "I did not mean to make the matter puzzling." Mr. Fox has explaine 1 to a friend. "To those who have written me as if an enigma existed, I refer them to Stallard shook his head,' 'his home and hers,' and why Katherine's eves filled with tears.' Romantic young women, overcome with sympathy for Stallard, may take comfort thusly: Long, long afterwards, when Stallard was a Cabinet Minister, he was persuaded one night to attend some social function. Looking through the

door, he saw a beautiful woman, familiar in face and figure. And she was dressed in black.'"

Mr. Fox's next novel, "Crittenden," was published in 1900. It was a new departure altogether. The writer had left his familiar mountains and followed the history of two young Kentuckians of fine blood through the Spanish War. This novel grew out of the novelist's experiences as a war correspondent. Here and there in the pictures of Kentucky is a sug gestion of the charming art of James Lane Allen; and the battle-field scenes are described with a vivid · ness which thrills the reader through and through.

The battle scenes in "Crittenden," indeed, are worthy of a place among the best descriptions f war. They show a facile and powerful pen, a highly trained power of observation, and a heart teeming with manliness and human sympathy. There is strength of character in abundance, as well as strength of action. Here is a striking picture:

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It had been a slow, toilsome march up that narrow lane of death, and, so far, Crittenden had merely been sprinkled with Mauser and shrapnel. His regiment had begun to deploy to the left, down the bed of a stream. The negro cavalry and the Rough Riders were deploying to the right. Now broke the storm. Imagine sheet after sheet of hailstones, coated with polished steel, and swerved when close to the earth at a sharp angle to the line of descent, and sweeping the air horizontally with an awful hiss-swifter in flight than a peal of thunder from sky to earth, and hardly less swiftly than the lightning that caused it.

"T-t-seu-u-u-h! T-t-seu-00! T-t-seu-oo!'- they went like cloud after cloud of lightning-winged insects, and passing, by God's mercy and the Spaniard's bad marksmanship-passing high. Between twɔ crashes came a sudden sputter, and some singing thing began to play up and down through the trees, and to right and left, in a steady hum. It was a machine-gun playing for the range-like a mighty hose-pipe, watering earth and trees with a steady spreading jet of hot lead. It was like some strange, huge monster, unseeing and unseen, who knows where his prey is hidden and is searching for it blindlyby feeling or by sense of smell - coming ever nearer, showering the leaves down, patting into the soft earth ahead, swishing to right and to left, and at last playing in a steady stream about the prostrate soldiers. "Swish-ee! Swish-ee! Swish-ee!'"

The character of Grafton, one of the war correspondents, may be accepted as exemplifying the novelist's personal trials and adventures.

"Blue-grass and Rhododendron," the volume of Kentucky sketches published in 1901, is worthy of the attention of the good people who regard the Cumberland mountaineer as the rankest sort of outlaw. According to Mr. Fox, the Kentucky mountaineer "has been more isolated than the mountaineer of any other State. There are regions more remote and more sparsely settled, but nowhere in the Southern mountains has so large a body of mountaineers been shut. off so completely from the outside world. As a result, he illustrates Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's fine observation that life away from civilization simply emphasizes the natural qualities, good and bad, of an individual. The effect of this truth seems perceptible in that any trait common to the Southern mountaineer seems to be intensified in the mountaineer of Kentucky. He is more clannish, prouder, more hospitable, fiercer, more loyal as a friend, more bitter as an enemy,

and in meanness when he is mean, mind you he can out-Herod his race with great ease."

In "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," Mr. Fox revisits the scene of his early successes. It is his most ambitious effort, and, on the whole, his best. With breadth of vision naturally develops breadth of power; these promising transitions are to be seen plainly in each new work of the Kentuckian.

He did not find the Cumberlands untrodden literary ground. Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) had been in that vicinity before him. But, as Mr. Howells with his exquisite discernment has said, Mr. Fox arrived when the right methods of fiction had been ascertained; he was not obliged to "outlive the false school in which we of another generation were bred, and whose influence Miss Murfree did not escape." As Mr. Howells delicately puts it: "It is high testimony to the truth of her art that one working in the same field confirms the impression of its reality by his later observation and report, and it is no question of his originality that at his best he makes you think of her."

Mr. Fox does his literary work at all seasons of the year. During the winter he divides his time mostly between New York and Big Stone Gap (the bottom has not entirely dropped out of that once prosperous mineral mining-town, and there, too, the climate is always refreshing). Last winter he and Thomas Nelson Page gave some readings together in Washington. In the summer he enjoys outdoor life to the full, as his occasional stories in Outing suggest.

We have before referred to the discovery in Mr. Fox's latest work of traces of the influence of James Lane Allen. Needless to say, the younger holds the older writer in the highest regard, nor could he have a purer model. Socially the chronicler of Big Stone Gap is popular. Once met, his presence is ever welcome. His manner is frank, hearty, cheerful, honest, manly. To twist what Samuel Rogers said of Jacqueline, to know him is to love him though he is unmarried. A brother, Rector K. Fox, is senior member of the publishing house of Fox & Duffield, New York.

As a writer Mr. Fox is steadily earnest and ambitious. Like Doctor Hale's model person, he looks upward, not down, forward, not back, and his aim is in each new effort to eclipse himself. A writer of this stamp, endowed with natural gifts, is bound to succeed. E. F. HARKINS.

Reviews

HAZLITT'S WORKS. The collected works of William Hazlitt. Edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, with an introduction by Wm. Henley. (London: J. M. Dent & Company: New York: McClure, Phillips & Company. 12 vols. $36.00.) IT is certainly a hopeful sign for English literature when an English publishing house will produce, and an American house will issue, such a beautiful collection of a great artist's work as this. Those who remember Hazlitt only as giving to college days or years long past some delightful experiences will, if their attention be but called to it, rejoice in this opportunity to meet again the old favorite, and to see him in such a neat garb or frame. For this edition has nothing of the meretricious in its make-up. It is printed clearly on good, fine paper, and is bound well and handsomely, but there is no nonsense of cover or miserable "artistic" finish to leaves or type. In short, it is such

an edition as Hazlitt would have himself enjoyed. The introduction, by Henley, is a joy. When one reads it, he feels a pang of keen regret that this great master of English criticism, so recently here, has gone, that we shall know no more of his sharp thrusts, even though we were at times hurt or angered by them. Who better could have written of Hazlitt than Henley? They were in temper, if not in life and doctrine, much alike. Both hated shams so thoroughly, and both so delighted to hammer at smug respectability and hypocrisy.

We may not all agree with Henley when he prepares to pass judgment on Hazlitt thus: "When Stevenson was pleased to declare that 'We are all mighty fine fellows, but we cannot write like William Hazlitt,' he said no more than the truth. Whether or not we are mighty fine fellows is a Great Perhaps; but that none of us, from Stevenson down, can, as writers, come near Hazlitt, this, to me, is merely indubitable." And his concluding paragraph runs thus:

"As a writer, therefore, it is with Lamb that I would bracket him; they are dissimilars, but they go gallantly and naturally together, - par nobile fratrum. Give us these two, with some ripe Cobbett, a volume of Southey, some Wordsworth, certain pages of Shelley, a great deal of the Byron who wrote letters, and we get the right prose of the time. The best of it all is, perhaps, the best of Lamb. But Hazlitt's, for different qualities, is so imminent and shining a second that I hesitate as to the preeminency. Probably the race is Lamb's. But Hazlitt is ever Hazlitt; and at his highest moments Hazlitt is hard to beat, and has not these many years been beaten."

These twelve volumes, of which nine have thus far been issued in this country, bring together an astonishingly vast amount of matter, on an infinity of subjects, but with an interest that attaches to only the very great minds. It is impossible to read some of these essays, or any of them, without a feeling of almost poignant regret that the day of the essay is practically past. It is not so much that our writers are compelled to keep "up to date," and so cannot cultivate a literary style, for many of Hazlitt's best papers were on current topics and news events, but the fault lies chiefly in a lack of mental grip and of keenness of thought as well as of brilliancy of expression and carefully studied style. And it does not seem to one who gets thoroughly filled with the charm of Hazlitt that this generation is wholly dead to masterful writing and clear expression. Great essays could, it seems, yet have a hearing, if they would only appear. If the issuance of these volumes should create anew the taste for the essay, it would be a most helpful and noble task.

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roast

Hazlitt was not a person of correct or moral life (and on that point I think Henley dwells too much), and his works have sometimes the faults of temper and spleen, but who does not enjoy, in our mealymouthed days, such a genuine castigation or (as we moderns call it) as that administered to William Gifford. One American author speaks of the lost art of objurgation; but he might counsel the youth to take heed of that wonderful letter. It was the most remarkable answer to a magazine article ever written. Catiline could hardly have replied in bitterer terms to Cicero. It seems that even in Hazlitt's days the author was thin-skinned, and resented criticism of his work.

One is tempted again to superlatives by re-reading these old pages. How one who saw Mr. N. C. Goodwin's fine production of " Midsummer-Night's Dream

will warm to the man who almost a century ago wrote:

"It has been suggested to us that the MidsummerNight's Dream' would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter proposed that Mr. Kean should take the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents. . . . There would be two courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets and glittering of spears! What a fluttering of urchins' painted wings; what a delightful procession of gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on them!"

But when one begins quoting from Hazlitt, he can hardly cease, and the reviewer's task in this affair is really not to review but to exult. One cannot help realizing the great author's limitations, his bias and his bile, but, with it all, he is a figure in English literature of whom the world to-day knows all too little, one who has waited very long for the raiment which is here so gracefully folded about him.

FRANK B. TRACY.

THE RECOVERY AND RESTATEMENT OF THE GOSPEL. By Loran David Osborn, Ph.D. (University of Chicago Press. $1.50.)

THE preface of this book is dated Bloomington, Illinois. It is a fruit, therefore, of the newly planted, rapidly growing, and vigorous Western tree of knowledge. As a product of the Chicago University Press, we give a guess it is a thesis, or grew out of a thesis, presented for a doctor's degree. It is an honest, earnest, rational, interesting essay. With its aim, everybody must sympathize; with much of its argument every one must agree. Its thoughtfulness, reverence, seriousness, and purity of intention there can be none to question. Its train of thought is clear and logical; its style simple and strong, dignified and precise.

The argument of the book may be stated simply in the following propositions:

Ist. The Gospel of Jesus Christ had become obscured during the course of its historical development. 2d. To recover it in its original form and strength, it is necessary to go back of this historical develop

ment.

3d. Such changes have taken place in modern thought and expression that it becomes necessary to restate the recovered Gospel in new terms adapted to the present day.

The author's thought, as above outlined, is unfolded in a striking, methodical, and suggestive way. He begins with tracing in turn the ecclesiastical and theological transformations of Christianity, first in Apostolic times, then through the Middle Ages, and finally during and after the Reformation. Next he shows that modern theological thought has read itself back into the Christian records, covering them more or less with honest but mistaken additions. Having thus cleared the ground, he proceeds to re-form and restate what he conceives to be the true Gospel, placing Jesus Christ at the centre, and radiating all lines of truth and influence from Him. By no means undervaluing the importance of theological statement, he discriminates carefully between Theology and Christianity, and all the way along emphasizes the distinction between Christianity and the Church. By "Church," of course, he means, largely and mainly, the Catholic Church, so called, of the early and mediæval ages, now divided as Roman

The Anglican

or Western, and Greek or Eastern. communion is not pointed at so specifically.

The force and meaning of the book lie in its Christocentric quality, in the personal and spiritual prominence it gives to Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, and in its insistence on a spiritual rather than a literal interpretation of Biblical teachings. Both the Bible and the Church are placed in their proper subordination to a living Christ.

The book is not a discovery, but rather an interpretation. It seeks to bring to light a hidden face, painted on an old canvas, covered up by modern accretions. To some extent it is an unconscious echo to Harnack, but it has a mind and feeling of its own, and is an independent essay, wrought out by an original process from private premises. As an example of the candor with which the new thought grapples with the profoundest religious problems, and as an instance of the ascendency which the Man of Nazareth still maintains in the thought of the educated world, the book is significant and well worth the reading of every religious teacher. EDWARD ABBOTT.

IRELAND UNDER ENGLISH RULE. By Thomas Addis Emmet. (New York: G. P. Putnams' Sons. vols. $5.00 net.)

A CLERGYMAN of Boston, himself of Irish ancestry, was only a short time ago speaking of the remarkable change which had come over English people in recent years and months in regard to the Irish people. All his life, he said, he had had to fight for Ireland, to contend against and argue with people who insisted that Ireland had received all the good treatment she was entitled to, and that Lord Salisbury's brutal suggestion of keeping the peace in that country by periodically shipping away a million Irishmen was an excellent idea. But, now, he found on every hand Englishmen and Americans glad to give the Irish people a chance, anxious to extend a helping hand; in fine, he found a sympathy which he had never known before.

Hence, perhaps, the motif under which Doctor Emmet began to write this work has largely gone. The world no longer so much needs to be told of Ireland's wrongs. But, be that as it may, this work is a most useful one, and seems to have been written in a right spirit. It aims to be fair; it is especially generous and just toward Englishmen, as contrasted with the English government, and, while it is purely historical, the treatment is of such a vivid sort that it has all the aspect of a story about things of to-day.

One cannot help feeling a great pity for these people when he sees how many, many land bills have been proposed in the last fifty years, all to be dropped or rejected by the British Parliament. One of the most interesting parts of the work is contained in the appendix, the diary of Thos. Addis Emmet while acting in Paris as the secret agent of the United Irishmen, from May 30, 1803, to March 10, 1804. This was evidently an ancestor of the author of these volumes.

This story of English rule toward the Irish people is not pleasant reading; it brings to mind days of greed and a whole reeking history of cruelty, oppression, and misery. It is one of the darkest pages in all Albion's history. And, we fear, bright days will not be the only ones which Ireland will see, even with the passage of the Land Purchase Act. But let us be thankful that the Anglo-Saxon race has got finally out of the mire and degradation of Irish oppression, and let

THE HOME. By Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (New York: McClure, Phillips & Company. $1.50.) IN "The Home," Mrs. Gilman has written a remarkable, even a startling book, full of thought, full of statements and suggestions new and striking. She shocks us by frankly wishing to tear down the idol of the home; she argues that women should stay in the home no more than men, should be as much and as free in the world as men are, returning to their loved fireside only as men do, never to be house-bound; that there is no more sense in woman being a housewife than in man being a house-husband, both conditions retarding human development.

To their loss, not all the world will care to read this book, in spite of its broad yet personal dedication; not all who are interested will believe in it; not all who believe in it will be helped by it. Since revolution and reform start always from restiveness under present conditions, it is no plea against the book that it sows seeds of discontent, or revives those already sown. Most thoughtful women feel that their lives are narrow, and long for breadth and achievement, - long forlornly and resignedly.

Mrs. Gilman's pen is an unusually convincing one, and, despite our rebelling, there is in us that subconsciousness of guilt which makes us see again and again her finger pointing straight to us, and hear over and over the verdict, Thou art the man!" or woman, to speak more correctly. We must nearly all plead guilty to her charges, but how shall a change come? We need another book to tell us of a remedy. We confess, while loving home with all our hearts, that we are burdened with inconvenient, sometimes ugly, houses, with troublesome kitchens, troublesome laundries, troublesome, senseless furnishings, troublesome, incompetent servants, but they are ours, and what shall we do with them? How can our dear invalids and our dear old people lend themselves to coöperation? Much as we respect the ever growing army of selfsupporting women, how could we all, or nearly all, keep up in this procession? Already, often foolishly, but sometimes justly, comes a complaint that daughters are taking the places and earning the wages that belong to sons. It is easy to say the world is wrong, but how shall we right it?

We would like to speak of the book with great emphasis, emphasis sufficient to ensure a wide reading. We hope that among those able to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" may come a leader, a teacher for the multitude. Mrs. Gilman has told us what the average woman has and ought not to keep, what she is and ought not to be; now we wait to hear what she needs and how to obtain it, what she ought to be and how to grow to it.

A. C.

LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF ABBAS EFFENDI. By Myron H. Phelps. With an Introduction by Edward Granville Browne. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.40.) THIS is a book of absorbing interest, and, except for a certain lofty and condescending tone toward Christianity in the introductory pages, one of fine spirit and uplifting effect. The trouble with such writers as Mr. Phelps and Mr. Browne is that they fail to see how the light that radiates from "the Master of Akka" is a reflection of the True Light that "lighteth

every man that cometh into the world; " and that the teachings of Abbas Effendi are clearly to be taken as one instrumentality of Divine Providence for engrafting the spirit and life of the purest Christianity upon the Mohammedan system, and effecting a reformation of that mighty force from within.

Abbas Effendi is the head and centre of a new cult which appeared in Persia on the edge of Mohammedanism, so to speak, about sixty years ago. Its founder, Ali Mohammed, claimed to be a sort of John the Baptizer, forerunner of a Greater Prophet who was to come, a new Revealer of the One True and Supreme Being. When that Messiah appeared, he assumed the office and work which Ali had predicted for him, and gathered around him a following which, before many years passed, had made a definite impression on millions in Persia. The new movement arrested the hostility of the Mussulmans, and provoked the bitterest persecution, on which, however, it only throve. Finally, after untold horrors, the leaders came under the ban of the Turkish government, and were carried captive to the city of Akka, the Acre of old, a sort of Botany Bay for Turkish convicts of the worst class. There they and their descendants have lived ever since, under surveillance and regulation, but practically unmolested in the teaching of their religious system, in the exercise of a holy and lovely morality, and in the enjoyment of a social order which is in marked contrast to the life around them.

Mr. Phelps's volume, with Mr. Browne's introduction, resting upon a basis of personal visits to Akka, and much close and familiar observation and study, is in effect first a biographical portraiture of a certainly very remarkable man, Abbas Effendi, the present leader of the sect; second, an historical narrative of the train of circumstances which marked the establishment of the new cult and its transplanting from Teheran and Baghdad to Adrianople and Akka; third, a picturesque sketch of the life and ministry of Abbas in the Akka of to-day; fourth, an exposition of his theology and philosophy; and, finally, a selection from some of his discourses. Suffice it to say that the Master of Akka, as he is commonly known, is an hereditary Mohammedan with a Christian's mind and heart; that his religious teachings amount in large part to a repetition of the Sermon on the Mount; that while by no means containing all that is vouched for in the Christian system, it contains little, if anything, that is at variance therewith; that it enjoins and exhibits a life of natural and healthful ethical simplicity and truth; and that, if all the world should in time become Beha'istic, it would come little short of what most of us would call Christian. We wonder if Mr. Phelps and Mr. Browne have ever studied the Christian religion.

All who profess and call themselves Christians must surely rejoice that such a stream has broken out amidst the sands of Persia and spread to the edge of the Syrian plains and mountains, and will find in its outburst and flow a new promise and pledge of the coming hour, when the True Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world shall extend throughout all the earth, and when all men everywhere shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and live accordingly.

E. A.

Some Recent Books of Verse

OUT of the number of books of poetry, or, perhaps, we should say verse, to be nice in the use of words, which have come to us, a few are really good, some are pass

able, others are good of their kind, and some are pretty bad. On the whole the average would be high. Three stand out distinctly above the others, Josephine Daskam's "Poems (Scribner's), Josephine Preston Peabody's "The Singing Leaves" (Houghton, Mifflin), and Bliss Carman's "Songs of the Sea Children (Page). These three books are remarkably interesting when considered together, not compared, for they are too different in kind for that.

Miss Daskam's "Poems" are intensely emotional; they deal with the sorrows and partings of life, with death and grief, largely. A few of them have to do with children, naturally and sweetly; and there is one longer poem, in dramatic form, which tells of a prince who gave up all for a life in the open. Such purely human poetry, so to speak, is not of the highest sort; but of its sort, this poetry of Miss Daskam's is well up in the front rank, it is very genuine, very real. It - it is very genuine, very real. It would be hard for any one to read "Motherhood," the first poem in the book, without tears coming to the eyes. There is little or no love poetry in the book, and but two or three poems of nature.

Miss Peabody's "The Singing Leaves" is the exact opposite of Miss Daskam's work in every respect. It is absolutely unemotional; it is bright and sparkling; it deals little with the deeper human feelings, but with the chance moods and the stray fancies of our shifting minds This does not mean that Miss Peabody's work is flippant or careless, any more than that the expression of passing moods in Wordsworth is flippant. In the past Miss Peabody has been accused of being too mystical, too indefinite for general comprehension; in this volume she has apparently tried for simplicity both of thought and expression, and she has succeeded in one sense, though it takes a refined and delicate sort of mind to comprehend her fancies. Hers is by no means the simple poetry to 'touch the human heart" of newspaper readers, or admirers of James Whitcomb Riley and S. E. Kiser. "The Fool" is perhaps as good as anything in the book; it is very real and beautiful. We quote one short poem as a fair example of the kind of verse Miss Peabody gives us in this book:

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"VANTAGE

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orate nature, elaborate, this seems to be the right word, in both thought and diction.

William Watson's "For England" (John Lane) is verse written during the Boer War. It has little appeal to Americans, and is, in our opinion, rather inferior work.

Mr. S. E. Kiser has two books, "Ballads of the Busy Days" and "Soul Sonnets of a Stenographer (Forbes & Company), both of which are clever in their own way. The former is simple newspaper verse, dealing with every-day emotions in an every-day fashion, the sort of work sure to appeal to the uncultivated taste in poetry and to do the readers good. It is certainly better to write this simple sort of verse as well as Mr. Kiser does than to try a wabbly flight on Pegasus. The sonnets are funny and a bit vulgar, not shockingly vulgar nor excruciatingly funny, but mild in both directions. They have the merit of excellent rhythm, indeed, this is half the fun of them and the chief merit of Mr. Kiser's verse.

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Impertinent Poems," by Edmund Vance Cooke (Forbes). This again is a volume of newspaper verse, very well done so far as mechanics go, and very moral so far as sentiment is concerned. To quote a few lines:

Hither and Thither (Longmans) is a collection of rather pretty, entirely commonplace verse, such a book as any one, it would seem, could write if he cared to sit down and hammer it out. It has no special theme, or manner, or kind, or sort, or variety, or anything else special; it is just verse.

Kings and Queens." By Florence Wilkinson (McClure, Phillips). This is a very charming little book of unpretentious child verses. It starts with a prose idyl of the founding of the home and the coming of the children, the kings and queens who ruled the father and mother. The verses which follow are mostly built on child fancies. They are quaint and suggestive; but, unfortunately, Miss Wilkinson has not a good ear for rhythm. Many of the verses are difficult to read; they do not scan themselves, a grave error in this kind of work. Yet, notwithstanding, the book, as a whole, is fascinating and rather worth while. "Possessions," which we quote, shows clearly both the merits and faults of the book:

"All the things that people have
Look just like them;
My father's tall, plain napkin ring,
And mother's silken hem.

"David's old cap out in the hall,

I'd recognize in Jericho;
And Beulah's sash is so like her,

They could find it by the Hoang-Ho."