that carried off at Portsmouth, for there they show themselves capable of self-conquest." The same compliment in almost the same words is paid the Japanese diplomats by Mr. Ferdinand Brunetière in the review quoted above. The St. Petersburger Zeitung, the organ of the German embassy, thinks that Japan ought to be satisfied with the prospect of a treaty which will usher in a permanent peace, while Vorwärts (Berlin), the Socialist organ, says that "the effect of the peace negotiations will prove as glorious to Japan as they are subversive of the Czar's plans of Russian preeminence in East Asia." Japan's statesmen, thinks the Fremdenblatt (Vienna), have shown themselves as successful at Portsmouth as her fighting men did in Manchuria and the Straits of Korea. But The Saturday Review (London) remarks with coldblooded but felicitous cynicism:

declares the Journal des Débats, ought to do honor for safeguarding their interests in so masterly a way. According to the Tribuna (Rome) the result of the conference marks" Japan's latest victory over Russia, and the writer hazards the conjecture that in their sudden ending of the war the Japanese diplomats were acting under the inspiration of Machiavelli.—Translations made for TH LITERARY DIGEST.

REVOLUTIONARY RESULTS OF VICTORY UPON JAPAN.

ΤΗ

HE riots in Japan give point to a remarkable article in the Européen (Paris) by the editor of the Tokyo Mainichi Shimbun. This editor, who is a deputy in the Japanese Parliament, declares that the war has inspired his people with the spirit. of democracy. He says that for the first time in their history the Japanese have found themselves and recognized their responsibilities as a nation, and adds that the idea of equality among men. has superseded that of aristocratic exclusiveness. and plebeian submission. Every man, rich or poor, feels himself on the same footing in the eyes of the nation.

He goes on to draw a parallel between Japan. and England. After England's great struggle with France, which ended with the battle of Waterloo, the spirit of reform, the sense of personal responsibility, was evoked in Great Britain. So in Japan the personal patriotism of the Mikado's subject; has been proved and exhibited at Mukden and Liau-Yang, and, after those victories, and the arrival of peace, will survive in a new feeling of political and civic independence. To the success of Japanese arms, he says, every person in the country, young or old, contributed by his self-sacrifice. To quote:

"This people, which has sacrificed its money, to the extent of selling personal clothing for the benefit of the national war fund, and which has given generously the life-blood of its children, occupies no privileged position in the State and enjoys no. pension as the nobles do. Without denying the ability and devotion of the military leaders, it must be allowed that but for the heroic spirit displayed by the rank and file success in any great degree would have been impossible."

tained by the victorious party up to the time of its conclusion or more exactly measured the resisting force still existing in the defeated side."

The Spectator enumerates all the territorial and other gains of Japan and concludes: "M. Witte may exult in his hardly decent fashion at what he considers his victory; but it is Japan, not Russia, who has achieved a triumph, consolidated rather than limited by the terms of a peace signed before St. Petersburg has recorded a single victory either by sea or land."

Naturally enough, the French press extol the skill of Witte, and praise the wisdom with which the Czar has put an end to a disastrous war. There is only one exception in this laudatory verdict of the papers, and that is the utterance of a French Academician in the important review of which he is editor. Ferdinand Brunetière, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, already quoted, a magazine of the greatest weight and authority in Europe, declares that every single thing which was at stake in the war remains in the hands of Japan," and expresses astonishment that Russia should make the paying of the indemnity a question of "honor." The Paris Figaro thinks the Czar showed "great wisdom in his perception of the necessity for ending the game," a compliment that must apply with even greater force to the "wisdom" of the thousands who perceived the necessity long before the Czar did. The Gaulors (Paris) cails the sudden surrender of Japan a coup de théâtre, and says the incident constitutes a remarkable diplomatic victory fo: Russia and especially for Mr. Witte, to whom the Russians,

The writer proceeds to show that war has filled the mind of theJapanese with a sense of democratic equality. Those who fought. for peace and independence must enjoy the fruits of it. As in England the continental victories of Wellington paved the way for the reforms of 1832, so Japan expects that the extension of political privileges will result from the victories gained in Manchuria. He proposes, accordingly, something like universal suffrage in Japan. In his own words:

'It is ill advised, or rather unreasonable, to tell those who have devoted themselves to the service of their country, and are conspicuous for their loyalty, that because they do not pay high taxesthey therefore have no right of interference in the affairs of the nation. By extending the franchise on a large scale such deputieswill have a chance of being elected as really represent the claimsof the people, and are more interested in relieving social distressthan in projects of fresh taxation. In this way the distance be-tween rich and poor will be lessened and popular discontent kept in check."

He talks of military life as being actually a school of democracy and hints at a danger which threatens the State unless "the governing class give their best consideration to the present tendency of thought in the nation." He argues as follows:

"In spite of this equalizing tendency, the distance between rich and poor in Japan must inevitably increase. The growth of

expenditure on administration and on repayment of loans and other legacies of the war, together with the rise in prices, will widen the breach between the masses and their rulers, and altho the growth of capital will enlarge the sphere of financial operations, the money will find its way to the rich, rather than to the poor. Such is the change that will come with peace. While general public opinion tends toward equality, the financial situation will tend to create a social abyss."

The result of the war, in short, has been to set Japan upon her feet, and to teach the people their

rights and their power.

Unless this situation is faced and provided for, this writer predicts "a terrible explosion."- Translations made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

TOLSTOY ON THE SIN OF HOLDING OFFICE.

PRESIDENT

ROOSEVELT is classed with Nicholas, Wilhelm, and Chamberlain as 'most immoral men" in Count Tolstoy's latest essay on the wickedness of governments. And not only are these rulers thus judged by the professed imitator of the One who said "Judge not," but " their supporters and parliaments" are put under the same condemnation. No moral man can be a legislator, says Tolstoy-a remark that may or may not be intended as a reflection on the new Russian "douma." Anarchy and individualism, as opposed to collectivism, socialism, or imperialism, appears to be the latest phase of opinion adopted by the earnest and eloquent Russian count, who has done so much to wake the conscience of Russia, and indeed of the whole civilized world. The idea of government, a controlling and directing authority in a country, he denounces in the London Times as abominable. The Russo-Japanese war, he says, with all its horrors, resulted from the existence of a government in Russia. After enumerating and stigmatizing several of the bad rulers of the Muscovite empire he goes on to speak of Nicholas II. thus:

"To-day heredity has tossed up on to the throne a weak-minded hussar officer, and he, with his hangers-on, undertakes his Manchuro-Korean scheme, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of rubles.

'Why, this is dreadful! Dreadful chiefly because, even if this insane war were to terminate to-morrow, a new fancy may, by help of scoundrels who surround him, jump into the weak head of this man in power, who may to morrow undertake a new African, American, or Indian scheme, and these will again drain the last strength out of the Russian people and send them to the other end of the world to commit murder.

'This is what has happened and is happening, not in Russia alone, but in every place where there has existed or is existing a government-i.e., an organization in which a small minority can force a great majority to do its will. The whole history of European States is the history of mad, stupid, dissolute men succeeding each other on their thrones, killing, ruining, and, worst of all, corrupting their people.

"The throne in England is mounted by an unconscientious, cruel scoundrel and rake, Henry VIII., and, that he may get rid of his wife and marry his concubine, he invents his pseudo-Christian Protestant Church, he forces the whole people to accept his in

The greatest hypocrite and villain, Cromwell, takes possession of the machine, and exer cutes another similar hypocrite, Charles I., and relentlessly ruins scores of thousands of lives and destroys the very faith for which he pretends to strive."

He makes no distinction between forms of government. All are equally wicked and unjust. The history of nations is nothing but a record, he says, of the iniquity of governments. To quote:

Read or recall to

mind the history of the European Christian nations from the time. of the Reformation. It is an uninterrupted enumeration of the most dreadful, senselessly cruel crimes committed by representatives of the Government against their own and other nations and against each other; incessant wars, plunders, the destruction or the oppression of nationalities, the extermination of whole peoples, the ruin of peaceful populations for the sake of rapaci, vanity, jealousy; or, under pretense of the establishment of religious truth, a continuous succession of stakes at which, among thousands of average men, were also burnt the best men of their time; treacheries, fraud, trickery, seizure of other people's property, tortures, prisons, executions, and vice, that dreadful unnatural vice which is met only among these unfortunate rulers. And this is the case not only with a Charles IX., a Henry VIII., an Ivan the Terrible, but the extolled Louises of France, Elizabeths of England, Catherines and Peters of Russia, and Fredericks of Prussiathey all do only this. Our contemporary governments-i.e., the men who at present compose governments (whether these governments be autocratic or limited monarchies or republics)-do the same thing; they can not but do it because in it consists their function."

He ranks even American presidents, and names Mr. Roosevelt, among those who grasp by violence the wealth of the laboring classes, and he says of all rulers and statesmen whether elected by the people, or succeeding to a throne as despotic emperors or heirs to the crown of a limited monarchy:

"Their function consists in grasping the greater part of the property of the laboring classes, by means of violence in the form of direct or indirect taxation, and of using these means according to their discretion-i.e., always for the attainment of party or their own personal avaricious ambitions and vain aims. Secondly, in maintaining by violence the right of a few men to possess the land taken from the whole nation. Thirdly, to organize by hire or conscription an army-i.e., professional murderers and at their will to send these murderers to kill and rob this people or that. Or, lastly, to institute laws which would justify and consecrate all these villainies. This is precisely what is being done by present-day Roosevelts, Nicholases the Second, Chamberlains, and Wilhelms, with their supporters and parliaments. In this consists their function. And this function can be accomplished only by the most immoral men. One need only carefully examine the essence of that in which the exercise of governmental power consists in order to understand that those men who rule nations must be cruel, immoral, and necessarily standing lower than the average moral level of their time and society. No moral man, nor even an incompletely immoral person, can be on the throne or be a minister or legislator, the determiner and definer of the fate of nations. A moral. virtuous statesman is as great an inward contradiction as a moral prostitute, an abstemious drunkard, or a meek brigand."

NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE DAY.

SCIENCE'S LATEST MARTYRDOM. ANTARCTICA; OR, TWO YEARS AMONGST THE ICE OF THE SOUTH POLE. By Dr. Otto G. Nordenskjöld and Dr. Johan Gunnar Andersson. Illustrated, with Maps and Index. Cloth, pp. xviii, 608. Price, $5.00. Hurst & Blackett, Limited, London. The Macmillan Company, New York.

HE scientific material collected by the ill-fated Swedish Antarctic ex

Government. Dr. Nordenskjöld wrote at once on his return an outline of the expedition's experience to the London Times; later, one to the Deutsche Revue; also a short sketch to the Independent, this year. This is the English form of the full popular account.

The Antarctic, it will be remembered, after cruising a month in the seas south of the South Shetland Islands, landed Dr. Nordenskjöld with a party of five on "Snow Hill Island," ," south of Haddington Land, to winter there. They erected their -house and observatories, and began scientific work. The steamer then brought the rest of the scientists back to the waters between Tierra del Fuego and South Georgia Island, where, under Dr. Andersson, they made scientific investigations. The intention was in the spring to take off Dr. Nordenskjöld; the best possible use was to be made of the Antarctic summer of 1902-1903; and in May, 1903, they were all to be back in Sweden.

OTTO G. NORDENSKJÖLD.

But when the Antarctic turned southward for Dr. Nordenskjöld, the pack-ice prevented her from reaching him. Dr. Andersson, with two companions, left her at "Hope Bay," meaning to try to reach Nordenskjöld by sledge. They failed, however, and were forced to return to the bay and winter in an improvised stone-hut. Poorly equipped, they suffered great hardship. The Antarctic, nipped in the ice, sank south of the eastern extremity of Joinville Island, carrying down collections, notes, Her twenty souls, after drifting about on the ice for sixteen days, landed on Paulet Island, where they led a wretched existence for nine months. One of the sailors died and was buried there.

etc.

Here lay the two relief parties during a second winter, each ignorant of the fate of, and unable to communicate with, the other, and both equally unacquainted with Nordenskjöld's condition and barred from reaching him. Yet so near to each other were the three parties. that from his island's heights Nordenskjöld could see the locality of both Andersson's and Captain Larsen's station, without, however, any of his little band's suspecting their friends' comparative nearness. Finally, Andersson and Nordenskjöld met on a sledge-trip. Soon afterward Larsen and five others set out in a whale-boat from Paulet Island and found Nordenskjöld, on the very day that he had been reached by the officers of a warship sent out for the expedition's relief by the Argentine Republic. Part I. gives the story of Dr. Nordenskjöld's party, and is written by him; Part II. tells the experiences of the two relief parties, and is written mostly by Dr. Andersson, the botanist of the expedition, and Captain Larsen.

To the general reader, the book's main interest will lie in what gave Kane's and Livingstone's and Stanley's writings their charm-its story of romantic adventure. It is as fascinating reading as Robinson Crusoe. Antarctic scenery and natural phenomena are vividly portrayed. There is abundant detail that makes the pictures clear and complete without tiring. And the ample maps and the numerous illustrations from photographs (there are a few reproductions in color from paintings by F. W. Stokes, the American Polar artist, who was with the party for a time), added to the graphic text, bring the romantic happenings so clearly before the reader that he feels himself actually going through them.

The expedition made the first comprehensive researches in the seas and lands south of South America and the Atlantic-"the land of greatest mystery the earth now owns." It has reconstructed the map, between longitude 55° and 64° W., of the southernmost land man knows. It discovered the first fossil on South Georgia Island, and further south fossils (animal and plant) that form a foundation, Dr. Nordenskjöld thinks, on which will eventually be built a knowledge of the main Antarctic geological features from the Jurassic period to our own time. It made geological, botanical, and zoological collections, and astronomical, meteorological, hydrographical, and magnetic observations, extending over two years (in collaboration with the English and German expeditions working simultaneously respectively in Victoria Land and Emperor William Land), also bacteriological investigations, the exact value of the whole of which remains to be announced. The Antarctic region it found to be practically uninhabitable-in summer as cold as the Swedish winter, and in winter still colder, with terrific, protracted hurricanes. The

expedition did not either winter or penetrate as far south as either the English or the German one.

ANOTHER DREAM OF MAN'S BEST ESTATE.

A MODERN UTOPIA. By H. G. Wells. Cloth, 393 pp. Price, $1.50 net. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Με

R. WELLS meant this work as a very serious one. Many readers of it will find its perusal trying, and will fail to realize, as proper compensation for the task of reading the same, whatever grist it offers for the mind. It would have been far better had Mr. Wells maintained throughout, both in the form and manner of his book, as well as in his attitude toward it, an unmodified seriousness. "A Modern Utopia" is the third book from him to deal with sociological and kindred topics. In a note to the reader Mr. Wells admits that he wrote the first of them, "Anticipations," in order to "clear up the muddle" in his own mind anent the subjects he therein treated. That did not accomplish the classifying process desired, so he wrote "Mankind in the Making." This he regards as "even less satisfactory, from a literary standpoint, than the former," but it was an improvement as far as his own instruction was concerned. In fact, he achieved "a certain personal certitude upon which I feel I shall go for the rest of my days." In this third book he deals with some issues left over or opened up by the others, and seeks to embody "the general picture of a Utopia.. at once possible and more desirable than the world in which I live." He says he has written into it "the heretical metaphysical scepticism upon which all my thinking rests."

Since Mr. Wells has so successfully taken his "cure," and promises to abandon the style of work which wrought it, one might congratulate him and let it go at that. This, however, would be human and friendly, rather than critical. Certainly, Mr. Wells, in his button-holing of the reader by his foreword, suggests, by his apologetic deprecation and forestalling, not as much confidence in his work as in the result upon him, and, candidly, the work appears to warrant it! Not that the otherness of his Utopia is too bizarre, too foundationless, or not sufficiently ameliorative. But it is not Utopian enough. It is municipally very proper, clear, and reasonable, rather than alluring. It is a panacea, perhaps, for Mr. Wells's laboring mind, but not a potent lure for other mentalists with a keener demand for Happiness with a large H.

There is a wobbly bit of romance, and a thankful skein of narrative which only irritate and distract the reader. Mr. Wells places his Utopia on the extreme verge of space, and then (as antidote to nostalgia?) finds it so like Switzerland and London, tho "improved," that the visible difference is not perceptible. "It would be indefinable, a change in the quality of their grouping, a change in the quality of their remote small shapes." This is not the Utopia of the human dreamer, who would fain have a palpable touch of Paradise in his.

Another unhappy "property" Mr. Wells employs is a wretched botanist who has had an unfortunate love-affair, for which Utopian wanderings are not even a distraction. He is a tiresome little creature. So that Mr. Wells's attempt to sugar-coat his pill of sociological ideality only makes it more bitter. His Utopia suggests a "Bank Holiday" with the nicest kind of self-made: men consciously ruminating on their delectation.

H. G. WELLS.

There is no laboring or servile class in this Happy No Land. The gov-. ernment of this World State is vested in a body of "Nature's Noblemen," whom, with his transliterative penchant, he styles "Samurai." There is. a premium on Maternity. Mr. Wells admits that the question "of mar-. riage is the most complicated and difficult in the whole range of Utopian. problems." But the question of government is more insistent. There is. no meat in this Utopia, which suggests melancholy degrees of cereal. alimentation. But in the matter of drinks, there is a lovely latitude. "Under no circumstances," says Mr. Wells, robustly, "can I think of my Utopians maintaining their fine order of life on ginger-ale and lemonade. Those terrible temperance drinks fill a man with wind and self-righteous-. ness." In this respect, his Utopians are Eu-to-per-ians.

"A Modern Utopia" has received lengthy and flattering criticism, or at. all events, reading notices. The London Athenæum says "there has been no work of this importance published for the last thirty years."(?) The. Academy thinks it". 'an advance on Mr. Wells's high level." The Outlook(London) thinks the main attraction of the book is its "unaccountabletouch of reality," but as to real problems of Society, when Mr. Wells treats. them we "feel that he is floundering in a quagmire of superficialities and. impossibilities," and "immaturities of conception." The Sun and Times (New York) are laudatory, but The Independent scores the blend of romance and argument as exceedingly unfortunate," and regards the

paper read before the Oxford Philosophical Society in 1903, by Mr. Wells, which figures as an Appendix to "A Modern Utopia," as "more worthy of praise than the book itself." The Tribune congratulates the readers of Mr. Wells's imaginative works that he has unloaded all of the "perilous stuff" of his sociological investigations. The Evening Post says the oldline Socialist will find in Mr. Wells a veritable Balaam-Balaam having blessed when he was called upon to curse.

All of which seems to show that Mr. Wells, in writing under the inspiration of his "heretical, metaphysical scepticism," is not as universally acceptable as when he sets the mill of his scientific fancy at work. We happily have his own statement in the "Note to the Reader" which prefaces "A Modern Utopia" that this is, "in all probability," his last excursion into such fields of thought.

OUR NORTHWESTERN POSSESSION.

ALASKA AND THE KLONDIKE. By John Scudder McLain. Cloth, pp. xv, 330. Price, $2.00 net. McClure, Phillips & Co.

A

CLEAR picture of Alaska-its history, population, occupations, resources, and problems. The book shows what life is in that region nearly as big as the United States east of the Mississippi, a large part of it lying in the Frigid Zone, and all of it for eight months each year cut off from the outside world save, at points, by telegraphic connection (recently established) and an uncertain, monthly, abridged mail; where all the year round the earth is frozen from a depth of two to one of ninetyfive feet; where the buildings are wooden and without plaster, because the ground's change in height with the seasons destroys stone or brick structures, and loosens plastering; where in midwinter the sun is visible but four hours of the twenty-four, and in midsummer one who wishes to "see the town by night" finds himself guilty of an impracticable desire. The author quotes a Nome lady as saying: "From cordial friendship and real enjoyment of each other at the beginning of the 'shut-in' period, we come to tolerate and finally to feel a positive aversion for each other, till along in the spring then we get over it and are friends again.". All the women who can, spend the winter elsewhere in Southern California, say, New York, or Florida.

JOHN S. MCLAIN.

...

Mr. McLain considers Alaska to be a very rich country, with a great future. Seward Peninsula, he thinks, is probably the richest gold-field of its size in the world. When reading the annual statistics of the Alaska gold output, he rightly reminds us, we should remember how few have produced it: with more mining, there will result more gold. The salmon fisheries employ more capital than the gold-mining, and produce yearly as much value (sometimes half as much more). Their average annual product alone exceeds the original cost of Alaska by a million dollars, and the total catch since Alaska became ours surpasses seven times what Mr. Seward paid for the whole district. Mr. McLain thinks that Alaska will eventually provide her own food, which, by reducing living expenses, will greatly help the mining. While the new Fairbanks diggings offer opportunities for "enterprising men-young, strong, and vigorous. with $1,000 to $5,000," he discourages any "stampede" at present by those having only their hands.

Alaska's greatest need and the key to her wealth is, in the writer's opinion, transportation-wagon roads and, eventually, railroads. He blames our Government for not having furthered the mining by building roads, as the British Klondike authorities have done. Next comes the need for amendments to the mining laws, preservation of the fisheries, better mail facilities, and a Congressional representative. Mr. McLain suggests that the country be spilt into two Territories, one comprising Southeast and the other Northwest Alaska, the central region remaining as it is till developments warrant a change.

As the New York Times notes, Mr. McLain had "an exceptional opportunity for gathering material" for this volume. He accompanied the subcommittee on the United States Senate committee on territories on its visit to Alaska in the summer of 1903. Every effort was made to show them the country, and men of all sorts and conditions flocked-often even from the outlying districts-to lay their knowledge before them. The matter of the book, with the exception of two chapters, originally appeared in Mr. McLain's paper, the Minneapolis Journal. These letters have been revised, and the facts and statistics now cover 1904. To the Brooklyn Times's adjectives "readable and compact," we add "graphic and informing.' .". The illustrations, many of them full-page, are from photographs. There is a map showing the cable and telegraph lines, and the railroads built and proposed; also an index.

A FRESH STORY.

THE WALKING DELEGATE. By Leroy Scott. With frontispiece. Cloth, 372 pp. Price, $1.50. Doubleday, Page & Co.

R. SCOTT'S name is not unknown in magazines. As preparation became a scab "elevated" employee in New York. This, his first book, is a novel on the subject of that article-labor strikes. The story treats of the affairs of the New York branch of the "Structural Ironworkers' Union." Not every novel opens, as this does, on the twenty-first story of the just-risen steel-frame of a New York hotel. The villain and the hero are respectively Buck Foley and Tom Keating, foreman of this job. Foley is the union's walking-delegate, and even Keating (who has had no cause to like him) acknowledges: "If Foley had had a fair start and had been honest, he'd have been the biggest thing that ever happened." The Chicago Record-Herald thinks the character is based on the devious Sam Parks. So militant a grafter, indeed, is he that the New York Evening Post, scenting "melodrama," hints two-edgedly that his outrages seem "too great even for a walking-delegate." Thrown on his own resources from early boyhood, formerly a Tammany hecler, originally not all bad, but finally given over to the one end of spoils; unlettered, but a born leader of men, sagacious, resourceful, quick; brutally plain-spoken at need; an artistic liar; a lurid hater; a fighter remorseless, diabolical, cool; and game even in defeat-he fairly wins a place among our mental portraits. Hardly less so Keating; bigger than his lot; tho ungrammatical, yet self-respecting, able, persevering; outcast from love; sacrificing bread to principle, and finally recognized by Foley himself as "the real article."

The character next in finish is Mr. Baxter, president of the Iron Employers' Association. Here we have the typical, able, aristocratic businessman, suave, diplomatic, fastidious, euphemistic, inscrutable, cold; grasping, of course. He is, besides, quick and deep-a rascal subtler than even Buck Foley. The most telling and satisfactory situation is where Keating (after quelling Foley and just before winning the strike) tells this artist in industry to his face: "I think you are an infernal hypocrite!-and a villain to boot!" Among the minor characters Mr. Driscoll, the "squarest" of the contractors, disappoints us by compelling our liking. The two backslidings of the grateful, slow-witted, ex-prize-fighter Swede, his SalvationArmy wife's big thrall, touch the subconscious. "Pig-iron" Pete furnishes some rather choice specimens of overalls wit. Of the women Mrs. Baxter, patroness of the working-class so long as it costs nothing, Mrs. Barry the hearty helpmate (contrast to Maggie Keating), and Mrs. Petersen, harboring a drop of unregenerate blood at the bottom of her heart, are clear transcripts from life. Possibly Tom's cheap, opinionated, and unyielding wife, with her heart in her clothes and furniture and departmentstore bargains, is, as The Evening Post thinks, a bit exaggerated. Girls like Ruth Arnold, the independent stenographer and heroine, are rarer. She develops into a noble woman. If neither she nor Tom wins happi ness, they win life's first prize-character.

LEROY SCOTT.

Characters, incidents, conversations, setting are of the latest and seem impressively real. Only intimate acquaintance with laboring life could draw workmen so truthfully and give their slangy, picturesque, undraped, and nail-head talk. It is a strong story, notable even among good novels. Says the Chicago Record-Herald: "The book stands out in the fiction of thirty-five years since the publication of Charles Reade's 'Put Yourself in His Place' as the only labor story written in English with full knowledge, insight, and sympathy."

VOLUMES I and 2 of Mr. Charles Evans's "American Bibliography" have appeared. Volume 3 is promised for the fall of this year, and the remaining five or six volumes at yearly intervals. Mr. Evans, at one time librarian of the Chicago Historical Society, has been engaged for some twenty years upon the great undertaking of compiling a record of "all books, pamphlets, and periodical publications printed in the United States from the genesis of printing in 1639 down to and including the year 1820." The Evening Post remarks: "The work is in many ways unique. Its typographical appearance is striking, the body of the titles being printed in capitals and small capitals, with lower-case letters for imprints and notes only. But the most important feature of this bibliography is the chronological arrangement of the titles. By choosing a chronological rather than an alphabetical or systematic arrangement, Mr. Evans has performed a real service, directly to students of American literature and civilization, and indirectly by the example he has set for future compilers of national bibliographies."