WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

MR.

R. HOWELLS' books have received from me to-day an unusual test. On returning from our Public Library, in a pitiless snow-storm, I lost a gold watch, my companion for fifteen years. I had carried it through sunny Italy and snowcovered Norway and Russia. I had grown to regard it almost as a wise human friend, who has the tact to be near one and be a part of one's life without ever disturbing by ill-timed conversation or unasked advice.

When I realized that my watch was gone, and permanently, I sat down to read Howells' "Indian Summer." I was again in Florence, going in and out of dim cathedrals, looking upon the historic Arno, and living in the grand old past. I followed Theodore Colville, at forty-one, with that remembered love in his heart, to the home of pretty Mrs. Bowen and her naive child, Effie. I watched him as he studied Imogene Graham, the impulsive girl of twenty, full of the life which forty years had long outgrown. I laughed when the man, “still very much of a boy" - unwilling to "deny himself

any reasonable and harmless indulgence; he has learned by that time that it is a pity and a folly to do so " - danced the Lancers because the girl of twenty asked him to do so. "He walked round like a bear in a pen: he capered to and fro with a futile absurdity: people poked him hither and thither; his progress was attended by rending noises from the trains over which he found his path. He smiled and cringed and apologized to the hardening faces of the dancers: even Miss Graham's face had become very grave."

I followed with tender interest the warm-hearted but mistaken girl who thought she was in love with Colville because she desired to make him happy, and found out, alas! when it bruised two hearts, that love is something other than sacrifice. I pitied Mrs. Bowen in her struggle to make love subservient to duty. Now I enjoyed the poetic description, and now the keen analysis of the heart, in which Howells is unsurpassed. The book was not all a love-story; the philosophy of life was on every page. One did not learn merely that for a man to wed a woman half his age is generally a mistake. One is half inclined to think, with Rev. Mr. Waters, that "the evil is less when it is the wife who is the elder. Women remain young longer than men. They keep their youthful sympathies."

Mr. Waters found the Indian Summer of life interesting, and said, doubtless, what Howells be

lieves: "At forty one has still a great part of youth before him; perhaps the richest and sweetest part. By that time the turmoil of ideas and sensations is over; we see clearly and feel consciously. We are in a sort of quiet in which we peacefully enjoy. We have enlarged our perspective sufficiently to perceive things in their true proportion and relation. . . . Then we have time enough behind us to supply us with the materials of reverie and reminiscence; the terrible solitude of inexperience is broken; we have learned to smile at many things besides the fear of death. We ought also to have learned pity and patience." I finished the book at midnight. The life had been so real, the picture so perfect, that I had been completely absorbed. I had forgotten that my watch was gone, forgotten that I ever owned one; and this was a comfort. One person at least will remember the "Indian Summer."

William Dean Howells, novelist, poet, essayist, and traveller, was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March 1, 1837. On his father's side his ancestry came from Wales. They were Quakers, showing their religion in their honorable business dealings, being engaged in woollen manufacture. To them, perhaps, Howells is indebted for the upright principles which have characterized his life: toleration of all faiths, gentleness of spirit, consideration for others, honesty, and purity. When the boy was three years old, the father, a man of much intelli