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The eeriness of the idea of the living man and the corpse in contact pulling at one rope is incomparable. One has a thrill every time one comes upon the The Spectator.

lines; yet simpler words could not have been chosen from the whole English language.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

People who are studying Esperanto, and those who are merely playing with it, will be interested in a condensed edition of Robinson Crusoe in Esperanto, which the Henry Altemus Co. of Philadelphia publish.

Under the title "Sermons That Have Helped," E. P. Dutton & Co. publish twenty or more discourses preached by the Right Rev. James H. Van Buren, D.D., Bishop of Porto Rico. They are all addressed to present day needs, and recognize the difficulties which beset Christian faith and Christian living. They make no pretence to erudition, and their dominant purpose is indicated in the title.

To the exquisite series of English Idylls, in which already one or two of Jane Austen's novels have appeared, there is added this season "Mansfield Park,"--decorated, like the preceding volumes, with twenty-four colored illustrations by C. E. Brock. No one has succeeded better than Mr. Brock in portraying the life, habits and dress of this period. The characters of the gentle novelist live again in his delightful pictures and with the added attractions of clear typography and dainty binding the book appeals strongly to lovers of Jane Austen. E. P. Dutton & Co.

A unique anthology is that entitled "The Ideal of a Gentleman" of which E. P. Dutton & Co. are the American publishers. It is edited by A. SmythePalmer, D.D., and represents the read

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This is the year of sympathy for the red-haired heroine, and she who gives her name to Miss Marguerite Bouvet's "Clotilde" deserves both pity and sympathy for her pretty young mother dislikes her, takes her away from her loving little brother and sends her to a convent school. There she finds an agreeable and highly amusing playmate and imbibes so much Christian charity that when her unkind mother is impoverished by her extravagance the little daughter gladly comes to her succor with her private fortune. The story abounds in the pretty French sentiment found in books written for convent bred children, but neither the author nor the tale is Catholic. A. C. McClurg Co.

In their very pretty "Remarque Series" the H. M. Caldwell Co. publish a collection of "Poems from Punch," edited by Sir Francis C. Burnand of "happy thoughts" fame, so long the editor of Punch. The poems grouped together here were published at various times from the year 1841, in which Punch was established, down to 1884.

Here are Hood's Song of the Shirt, Tennyson's After-Thought, Thackeray's The Mahogany Tree, Tom Taylor's penitent tribute to Abraham Lincoln and many other noteworthy bits of verse which first appeared in Punch, and about which and their writers the editor of this little book is able to supply details known only to those who were in the inner councils of the paper. The same publishers add to their series of Great Art Galleries a little volume which contains sixty reproductions of pictures in the Glasgow Gallery.

To any one who welcomed Mr. Richard Watson Gilder's first slender volume, "The New Day," thirty-three years ago, as the writer of this paragraph chanced to do,-as evidence of the advent of a new poet, it gives peculiar pleasure to turn over the pages of the Household Edition of Mr. Gilder's complete poems, just published by the Houghton Mifflin Co. This volume, which appears in a dress uniform with that in which so many of the elder poets have been presented, contains poems which have made up at least ten small volumes during the last thirty-three years. For a full generation, then, Mr. Gilder has been singing these graceful lyrics, with no abatement of delicacy or beauty, but with an increasing seriousness and grasp of the things of the spirit. The promise of the first little book of verse has been abundantly fulfilled; and there is no living American poet who approaches Mr. Gilder in range, in delicacy, in beauty of thought and feeling and expression.

Miss Selma Lagerlöf has long been known in the United States as the favorite novelist of the Swedish court and of the Swedish people, and her "Christ Legends," translated by Miss Velma Swanston Howard, should intro

duce her to a goodly company of the little ones. She introduces them by a beautiful sketch of a devout grandmother sitting all day long in her corner with a story always ready for the grandchildren, "a story true," as true as that I see you and you see me, and then she depicts the sadness when the corner stood vacant and all the songs and stories were driven from the homestead and "never came back again." She tells this legend and ten others with a fine simplicity, which makes reading them very like an act of devotion for a grown person, but sets them clearly before a child as tales to be accepted with loving reverence. The volume is appropriate for a Christmas gift for any one, old or young. Henry Holt & Co.

This

Mr. Booth Tarkington can write a much better French story now than was possible when he made his bow to American readers with "Monsieur Beaucaire," and his new story, "The Guest of Quesnay," contains one of the prettiest descriptions of a French inn and its head-waiter that has been written for many a day. But the Inn and the waiter are but the background for the extraordinary personage from whom the book takes its title. man gray-haired, but with the face of a boy, ignorant of the smallest social observances, honest, gentle, and wonderfully prepossessing is a mystery to the head waiter and his satellites, to the guests at a neighboring chateau and to the narrator of the story, but he soon plucks out the heart, and derives so much pleasure from the process that it would be cruel, by a prosaic revelation, to deprive the reader of the same delight. The tale is pure comedy but for a dark episode at its very outset, and would cheer those young gentlemen of Prince Arthur's acquaintance who were sad as night. The McClure Co.

Mr. Ralph Henry Barbour's "My Lady of the Fog" is one of those pretty tales of wooing printed in the summer magazines apparently that innocent man may read them in railway trains and arrive at the country-house, hotel or camp whither he is going, fully convinced that it is his duty, and what is more, his destiny, to woo and to marry. Having produced this desirable result, with the approach of autumn the chrysalis splits the covers of the magazine and emerges a butterfly book in gorgeous raiment of cover, and colored picture, and emblematic borders, ready for the good young man to present to the pretty girl as "The story that brought us together, darling." It is an excellent specimen of the variety, with a possible plot showing a comparatively poor young man winning the heart of a fabulously rich maiden, and offering to retire upon discerning the loftiness of the bough upon which the prize hangs; and it is to be hoped that none whom it served last summer will forget it now. Other readers will surely find it equally efficacious in its present form. J. B. Lippincott Co.

After the "Bab Ballads" and "H. M. S. Pinafore," comes "The Pinafore Picture Book" told by Sir W. S. Gilbert and illustrated by Miss Alice B. Woodward, and what fun the boys and girls of 1908 are going to have in reading it! Sir William gives the very good reasons for which the book is printed: that many very young ladies and gentlemen are never taken to the theatre at all, and that even when taken their visit is often fruitless because of cart wheel hats with bunches of wobbling feathers worn by ill-bred and selfish ladies; that it is sometimes difficult for them to follow the story; and that the opera is not played in every town every night in the year as it should be. After these serious remarks, and others

in the same vein, he places four chapters telling the story of the play and aided by the colored full page pictures and black and white sketches, and many of the songs and choruses with their music, he sets the modern child above the privations named in the preface. No better introduction to English wit and humor could possibly be devised than the study of "The Pinafore Picture Book." Properly distributed it may exterminate the disagreeable American ignoramus who is proud to say that "he cannot understand Punch." The Macmillan Co.

The volumes of the Variorum Shakespeare wax more and more with each successive play, and "The Tragedy of Richard the Third with the Landing of Earle Richmond and the Battell at Bosworth Field," with its 641 pages, would seem formidable were it almost any book but itself, but the right Shakespearean scholar will find it none too large. In the preface, the editor discusses the vexed question of the six Quartos and the Folio, "the stolen and surreptitious," and the "cured and perfect of [its] limbes," to say nothing of the second Folio and the other two Quartos. The play itself, with its notes, occupies over 400 pages; in the Appendix, the text, the date of composition, and the source of the plot are set forth; "The True Tragedie of Richard III" is printed in full; and also English and German criticisms of the character of Richard, of the text, and of the actors who have played Richard are given; the Ballad of "The Babes in the Wood" is printed in full with some account of the supposed connection between it and the play, and many minor matters are added. The printing is excellent, and the paper of a species to outlast the quality used for works of less importance. Happy they who have the leisure to enjoy every line of such an ad

dition to American learning. J. B. Lippincott Co.

Of making many books on Rome there is indeed no end, but with due deference to the Preacher, study of them does not seem to be a weariness to the flesh. Here is the first volume of Dr. Leonard A. Magnus's "Sittengeschritche Roms" published in translation as "Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire," in its seventh enlarged edition, with the second volume announced for publication early in 1909, and evidently it has not lacked readers. The City, The Court, The Three Estates, Roman Society, Means of Communication, and Touring under the Empire are the chapter heads, and under each is matter marvellously condensed. The most surprising thing about the book is the number of statements applicable to any great city of to-day, and reminding one of the Preacher's other statement,-"There is nothing new under the sun." A sympathetic strike; blocking the streets with booths; denunciations of transparent clothing for women; advertisements of quack medicine; the story of the schoolboy who "wasn't doing anything" and was recommended to take his cuffing "for next time," are yesterday's gossip, in spite of the centuries. The book deserves all its editions, and this one will probably vanish before the coming of the new volume. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Dr. Drake's industry has made so many of the interesting subjects of Boston history its object that the title of Miss Mary Carline Crawford's "St. Botolph's Town" by no means suggests the bulk of interesting information to be derived from its pages. In her preface, the author says that Colonial history did not interest her in her school days, because so many persons were presented only as their careers

touched New England, and hence appeared only as puppets with tiresome dates attached; and her endeavor is to show what manner of men came to the Colonies, and what was their behavior after they went thence, or while they remained. Portraits of Smith, Winthrop, Cotton, Vane, Endicott, Cromwell, who meant to come, Willians, Saltonstall, the Mathers, Andros, Stoughton, Frankland, and of Franklin in an uncommonly gracious mood, are among those which illustrate the book, and pictures of fine colonial mansions and of some humble birthplaces are set at intervals. The text is agreeably written, books describing minor phases of her subject have qualified her to view it in so many aspects that the chronicle is uncommonly well proportioned. cover emblazoned with appropriate design and a map of Boston in 1722 must be reckoned among the minor merits of a valuable book. L. C. Page & Co.

and the author's earlier

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The plot of "Corrie Who?" the latest variation of the story of the changeling, seems to be quite new, but to explain its novelty is to spoil it for future readers. Given a lion-hunting old woman, with a young and pretty "paid companion" and an eccentric, timid sister forming part of her household, and let her be profoundly moved by the discovery that the companion is exploring remote regions of New York for houses of a certain type and what is to be inferred? Nothing very definite surely, and nothing is to be made of the succession of small, odd events that follow, during her search, and the reader is kept in ignorance to the last moment, for it is the illogical ignorance of a selfish woman that turns the lives of the characters aside from their natural course, and its very foolishness conceals it. The reader can see that the hero and heroine make a pretty

and a good contrast to the scheming old woman and her sister, and the dishonest uncle who links together all the persons in the little comedy, and if the youth be less active than the ordinary New Yorker, he is none the less a fine fellow.

Mr. George Brehm really aids one's imagination by his beautiful portrait of the heroine, and his atrocious picture of the villain. He excels in drawing eyes that haunt one, long after one has turned the page upon them. Small, Maynard & Co.

Mr. Henry C. Shelley's "Untrodden English Ways" is not to be classed with books about England written by the travelled American, but rather with those of Mr. Edward Thomas and other English journalists who, stepping a little aside from the beaten track, have shown their countrymen unsuspected beauties in their island home; but he is no imitator. They, writing for their own countrymen, have aimed at beauty of style, and at the discovery of the picturesque. He, writing for Americans, has striven to revive the memories clinging about every clod and pebble of his native earth. Mr. Kipling puts Sussex associations into story form; Mr Shelley wanders about the island, straying into a city now and then, and calls up the ghosts of their past, to tell their own tale. Keble, Keats, Dick Turpin, Cromwell, Burke, Waller, "Little Billee," Queen Mary, the beautiful Stuart of England, not the grim Tudor, Thackeray, Isaac Watts are only the beginning of the long list, of whose haunts he speaks, making each a place to be noted for future pilgrimages. His method seems preferable to that of the Englishmen who discourse on natural beauties, for a new railway or a landslip may in a moment destroy the subject of their eloquence, but the memory of humanity survives even such changes. earthquake whelmed Westminster to

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morrow men would still visit the place beneath which lay Jacob's pillow and the spot immortalized in Addison's lovely words. The volume has five colored illustrations and a great number of photographs, all original, and sketches in the text show many a precious small bit. The chapters are so arranged that it is possible for a traveller to follow in the author's footsteps if he choose, but the real place to read him is among one's own books, for the reading will enrich a surprising number of them with marginal notes to be a delight in future days. Little, Brown & Co.

The novel written for the bookish, although a well-defined species is so limited in number that the bookish have no difficulty in reading each one of them as it comes, and Mr. E. V. Lucas's "Over Bemerton's" is so precisely adapted to their desires that long before the year is closed they will have fallen upon it and carried it off for that searching perusal of which only they know the delights.

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very title-page has a motto exciting the curiosity of the man not so bookish - as he wishes he was by its credit to "Observer's Corner"; each chapter head is a delight in itself, a long, tempting sentence promising excellent things in the space beneath, but giving no clue to the course of the story and in the very first chapter one finds Bemerton, second-hand bookseller, "with the suggestion of holy George Herbert in his name." At Bemerton's, the hero, Kent Falconer, buys "A Chinese Biographical Dictionary," paying two solid English pounds for it, and acquiring sufficient unfamiliar edifying literature to amuse him for many a long day, and also three "bed books" as Mr. Bemerton calls collections of good stories, and from these the most fascinating fragments are given and also bits of the

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