For the first and only time in his life it is said that Josiah Senter quickened his pace as he hurried back to relieve the long-suffering creatures. He skirted the orchard and came around the base of the hill. There stood the plow, but the horses were gone. On the plow-beam was a white placard-a pasteboard box cover-on which was penciled the following:

"JOSIAH SENTER TO NEIGHBOR JONES, DR. For unharnessing, stabling, and feeding one span of horses....

For repairs to trampled harness..

For not reporting the facts of the case at the

village..

Total...

$ 1.00

.25

.$50.00 *

$51.25

telling the story with great gusto and minuteness to an uproarious crowd at Baker's. Jones was not there. C. H. S.

Old Jim.

Dead?

You bet! Dead as a chunk of clay
'That's thrown up from the mine below
With a whack to the light of day,
Dull, senseless, and white as snow.

When?

Only now, as the shift was changed, As near as I can learn,

While brawny men were idly ranged, Each waiting upon his turn.

How?

Well, Jim was a little off his pins,

Had been on a jamboree,

When the cage came up, not minding his sins, And crushed him as you see.

Who?

Why that's his wife and babies three,

A kissing him in the sun. Excuse me, Cap, but I can't quite see, And my throat chokes up like fun.

Dead! Aye, dead as a chunk of lifeless clay, But I'd rather be dead old Jim, A laying right there so still to-day, Than to have sold whisky to him.

Al Kali.

Recent Fiction.

MISS HOWARD'S Guenn 1 is not merely the best novel of this winter, but also the most successful onea coincidence that does not by any means always occur. Probably a great element in its success has been a thing which must strike every one first and enduringly that is, the great surprise that this book has been. The novel-reading public is well aware that some half dozen years ago Miss Howard achieved a certain sort of success-and not a very poor sort, either with a vacation love story, called "One Summer." When we say the success was not a poor sort, we mean that the story was much read and much liked and much talked about by a very well-bred and intelligent class of people. But it was not to any extent read or liked or talked about by people who were critical. On the one hand it lacked any great excellences, and on the other it had several 1 Guenn : A Wave on the Breton Coast. By Blanche Willis Howard. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1884.

93 66

very painful crudities. Its success was due partly to an intelligence that made itself felt in spite of crudity, and to a brightness and "go," but chiefly to a really good feeling of the picturesque in character, situations, and relations. Whatever the defects of work manship, her figures stood out from the canvas-no strong, but still defined with a clear conception, and with much sense of beauty. Indeed, it was exactly the sort of novel in which the critical reader fin "promise of ability,' 'undeveloped capacity for rea ly important work, if the author go on to fulfil he possibilities"; and the one or two other similar slig stories from her hand have been of the same so: So seldom is it, however, that an author does ful the promise of one of these crude and clever ear books, that every one is more surprised to find i own prophecies of this sort fulfilled than to see an a solutely new writer arise. The fact is, that prom does not develop of its own accord like a butterf wings, but only by an incalculable amount of hard w and mental wear and tear; and the woman who

written a "successful" sunmer novel must needs be wiser than the most of our race if she can still regard herself as a beginner, and scorn no item of the schooling that is essential to any more valuable success. Miss Howard has done this; and we can not but take it as a cheerful omen of still further advance, and that she will do better yet than Guenn.

For it must not be supposed that Guenn is in any wise a great book. No literary adviser of judgment would set it down in a list of "novels that everyone should read," for the use of a young person, or of a circulating library with limited income. It does not place Miss Howard (in spite of its tenth edition, said to be already reached), in the first rank of living American novelists; but it does place her very fairly in the second rank. To our mind, it compares more nearly with Professor Hardy's "But yet a Woman than with any other novel. Both choose a French scene, and a tone gently withdrawn from the realistic without being at all untrue to life. By as much as Professor Hardy's story excels in delicacy, finish, and sweetness, Miss Howard's excels in vigor, in narrative construction, in picturesqueness. It was a happy idea to place the action among artists and canvases; it gave full value to the picturesque quality that constitutes so leading an element in the author's ability. We think there are several important mistakes: that Hamor's hardness under gentleness is overdone, for instance, both for truth to life and for artistic purposes; the hardness should have lain deeper down, and been better covered by a more genuine gentleness.. The author would have done better, also, to have elaborated and explained him less; yet there is much excellent work about him. We might speak of two or three other points where there is a little overdoing, bringing in a hint of the melodramatic; but in a review brief as the present one, to dwell upon them would give an unfair idea of the general quality of the story. Of more significance are the vigorous peasant-talk, the clever art-conversations, the bright interspersed observations. The central excellence, however, is the vivid little figure of Guenn herself. Woman's love, in its most intense and adoring form, has not often been put into literature better. So far as Guenn and her love goes nothing could be more perfectly done. And as to the tragedy of her fate, it was doubtless true of her as Hamor questioned of Yvonne, “whether it was or was not a nobler fate to catch a dim glimpse of a higher world, to be useful in a great art motive, to suffer and die of grief and desperation . . . than if she had never seen and known him, and had simply married a man of her kind and become a household drudge, to be sworn at and beaten, to grow old and stolid and ugly before her time." So long as no faintest shadow of wrong doing or wrong thought made part in her rouble-not even the sense that her affection had sen trifled with, for Hamor had been perfectly open with her, and had done not the least love-making-ere was nothing in her fate but what she would

have chosen herself, if she could have seen everything beforehand. She would not have hesitated a moment to choose the short, vivid life, the intense happiness and intense pain, and the quick, merciful death just as the cup of happiness had been drained, and the dregs of pain reached-the death she had wished for "like a Breton sailor's."

Next, but next after a long interval, among the novels to be noticed here, comes Edgar Fawcett's An Ambitious Woman.1 This novel is well written, and we have no doubt it is reasonably true to the sort of life it describes. It seems to be on a certain happy reproduction of the surface aspects of New York society life that Mr. Fawcett's novels depend for their success; people always like to see well described scenes and characters they are familiar with. A reasonable degree of success, however, would in any case be sure to a story written with so much taste. The scene that constitutes its culminationin which is disclosed to the husband the very imperfect nature of his wife's fealty, and her danger is not merely averted by his magnanimity, but changed into reconciliation and love-has much grace and feeling, and constitutes, to our mind, the only point of much excellence in the book. The story is of the daughter of an unsuccessful gentleman and his vulgar wife who sets her ambition indomitably upon ascent to the highest social station: and, as she has more beauty, intelligence, and social gifts than anyone she encounters from the lowest stratum to the highest, and receives at every turn unlimited and extraordina ry help from others, who are captivated by her personal charm, she succeeds. As her especial success in the way of making others contribute to her aims was a very advantageous marriage, the rapidity and completeness of her rise is not contrary to nature. Moreover, the author has succeeded in conveying to us an impression of the peculiar charm that won her her unfailing allies. But having said this, we have said all. In spite of the heroine's conclusion after she had won her game and then almost lost it that it had not been worth the candle, and her withdrawal from gay life, in spite of the mild disapproval expressed of the heartlessness of her ambitions, it seems to us a serious flaw in the story that the heartlessness is allowed to be so extreme. It is not merely an ethical but an artistic flaw; for the character of Claire is intended to be only superficially cold and vain, and to derive its charm, even in her vainest days, from the real sweetness, sincerity, and loftiness shining through. It is therefore an unpleasant mistake to make her guilty of the brutal heartlessness of robbing another woman of the man she knows her to have loved absorbingly for years, merely because he can help her socially; and in this-the greatest crime one woman can commit against another-the sympathies not only of all the onlookers but of the

author are with the robber. No one-not even the friend who has been Claire's sternest mentor, and has habitually disapproved her absorption in her ambitions-sees any harm in this unfeeling destruction of another's happiness; they warn her that she has made this woman suffer so keenly that she must be on her guard against her as a social enemy; and then they all gather round her stanchly to "protect" her against the injured woman's desperate little fling of spite; and this small spite from a woman tortured by despised love and by triumphant rivalry is held up as a monstrous ugliness, and "punished" (the very word used) by the indignant rallying of every one to Claire's side, and the final, pitiless crushing of the thwarted rival as a sinner beyond forgiveness. Claire suffers some penitence afterward for ingratitude to her husband, and for the vanity and shallowness of her former ambitions; but for having coolly spoiled Mrs. Lee's life, neither she nor her friends nor the author seem to think the least ruth is in order. It is even made a grievance against the unfortunate Mrs. Lee, such as to justify any harshness, that she resisted the demand that she should give social help and homage to her rival. Poetic justice can hardly be demanded in literature at the same time with truth to life; but there is neither rhyme nor reason in such unconscionable prosaic injustice as this. We are inclined, too, to take issue with a view of American society which recognizes no other strata than the vulgarly poor, the vulgarly rich, and the circles of wealthy and fashionable refinement. Such a girl as Claire-whose father was an educated man, and who had attended various schools and lived in various quarters-would not have failed to find some trace of the refined, generous, and sensitive people who are scattered through all ranks of American life, and are more abundant in the middle ranks than in those of wealth and fashion.

A very charming sketch of old Virginian life and a very poor story is Judith. It is the chronicle of a sensitive old-fashioned child among the older people of a Presbyterian whig homestead in Virginia : the loves and fears and imaginings of such a child, the sermons she hears, the stories told by the fireside, the political talk, the negroes' ways, the manners and customs and characters-all are perfect; lovingly and evidently truthfully told, and specially welcome as a picture of a Virginia far newer to literature than that of Democratic and Episcopalian neighborhoods. These Virginian Presbyterians are a very attractive cross between Puritan and planter-the Puritan type of character, with courtlier manners and with easy patriarchal methods of life. If only the author had not tried to make a novel of her sketch, and introduced a love affair into the life of each of the young people who form the group about the child, and made each and every one of these affairs end painfully, all might have been well. Six disappoint

Judith: A Chronicle of old Virginia. By Marion Harland. Philadelphia. Our Continent Publishing Co. 1883. For sale by Billings, Harbourne & Co.

ed loves falling upon the six young men and women of the story, ranging through all degrees of anguish up to desertion and death, and leaving a number of spoiled lives behind them, mar an otherwise delight. ful book.

Another and more elaborate detective novel, from an author who has already worked that lead with some success, is Hand and Ring.2 It is ingeniously wrought out; the mystery is well preserved—so well that probably not the most ingenious reader will penetrate it until the author is ready to direct suspicion to the right point-and all the links are nicely joined in their proper places. The literary quali ty of the story, however, is not all it should be. The author suffers under the embarrassment of having to deal with crime, while yet her own taste keeps her in an atmosphere of well-bred and clean-minded people. No matter how much ingenuity is brought to bear in construction, it is probable that no very good detective story can be written without much burrowing in the dark and loathsome ways of crime. Moreover, in American life we are somewhat limited in variety of available crimes; there is really nothing except murder that is at once thrilling enough for the purpose, and compatible with the spirit of well-bred American writing; and, what with newspaper murders and the number of murder stories already written, this becomes very monotonous; and is, at best, a somewhat coarse and clumsy basis for romantic interest, compared with the network of war, crime, intrigue, political conspiracy, passion and secret police that French writers of detective stories can make use of. Not only as an American but as a lady is the author of Hand and Ring at a disadvantage in her line of fiction; and the difficulty of believing in the magical powers of the New York detective is still another drawback. The possibilities of American detective romance, however, are an interesting field for experiment; and it is as a contribution not without value to such experiment, that the book under review should be regarded.

A Woman of Honor 3 is the title of a small New York society novel by H. C. Bunner, which also exists, we understand, in dramatic form. It is not without good elements for a drama, the characters being sharply accented, and the situations likewise; but as a novel it impresses us as a little thin and a little crude. There is an air about it of having attempted something rather more ambitious than the author's powers were equal to the conversation tries to be a little cleverer, the analysis a little subtler, the emo tion a little deeper than he could achieve. Mr. Bun ner seems to be unfailingly good in bric-a-brac verses but he will have to do something better than Woman of Honor before he makes any mark as novelist. It is something to be noted, however, th

2 Hand and Ring. By Anna Katherine Green New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1883. For sale t A. L. Bancroft & Co.

8 A Woman of Honor. By H. C. Bunner、 Bosto James Osgood & Co. 1883.

his ideals in fiction are good, and it may be more promising to aim at and miss high-grade work than to succeed in low-grade.

Albert Gallatin. 1

THERE are certain American statesmen who live in our national traditions, and whose names will continue to be remembered though the biographer should neglect to set forth their deeds and virtues. Albert Gallatin, however, was not of this class. He possessed few qualities that belong to the popular hero. His life and character made no very powerful impression on the mind of the nation. He was a patient and laborious secretary, not a great leader. His name never became prominently identified with any great national cause, and consequently passed early into comparative obscurity. At the time of the appearance of his Life and Writings, by Henry Adams, in 1879, he was probably less widely known than any other Americar statesman of equal

merit.

It is difficult to study carefully the character and career of a prominent man, without becoming more or less disposed to look upon him as a hero. When one attempts, therefore, to set forth the life of a man like Gallatin, who was in no sense a hero, and who even possessed few attributes of real greatness, he subjects himself to the liability of overstating his case. Mr. Stevens has not entirely avoided this common fault of the biographer, as may be perceived in the tone of eulogy which marks certain portions of his sketch. Mr. Gallatin was not a man of whom it is becoming to speak much in the superlative. He was an able and industrious statesman, who rendered the nation valuable service; yet we should speak with doubtful propriety if we were to characterize his career as brilliant, or his talents as splendid. Notwithstanding a slight tendency to overestimation, Mr. Stephens's account of him is, in the main, faithfully rendered; and if the book is likely to be generally less attractive than some others of the same series, the defect is largely in the subject.

When Gallatin came to this country in 1780, at the age of nineteen, his fundamental political principles were already determined. He was a democrat, and although not an extravagant advocate of all of Rousseau's doctrines, yet he was a democrat after the manner of Rousseau. In other words, his democracy was of the European type, whose main feature appears to be an exalted idea of individual rights, coupled with a very imperfect appreciation of individual obligations. His political views led him to aftiliate readily with the party opposed to the growing national spirit of the country, and made him willing to resist the government, when its exercise of authorty subjected him to inconvenience. This is clearly

exemplified in his participation in the anti-excise agitation in Pennsylvania, and especially in the intemperate tone of the Pittsburg resolutions, which Gallatin is said to have drafted.

Between Gallatin and Hamilton, both of foreign birth, there were many points of contrast; and not the least of these is seen in the fact that Hamilton possessed an exceedingly attractive personality, while we are comparatively indifferent to the personality of Gallatin. What Hamilton was, rather than what he did, interests us; but, on the other hand, about all we care to know concerning Gallatin is what he did. This Mr. Stephens appears to have recognized; for, instead of presenting the events of his life in their chronological order, which would have best shown us the development of the man, he has discussed his work under several heads, determined by the several spheres of his activity, devoting, as was becoming, more attention to his labors as Secretary of the Treasury than to any other special part of his career. In this position his peculiar talents appeared to the best advantage; for he was not a political seer, like Calhoun, but a patient and industrious calculator, who made use of all attainable facts. This is his own correct judgment of himself. "If I have met with any success," he said on one occasion, "either in public bodies, as an executive officer, or in foreign negotiations, it has been exclusively through a patient and most thorough investigation of all the attainable facts, and a cautious application of these to the questions under discussion."

For nearly half a century Mr. Gallatin served his country honestly and honorably, and it is fitting that one who for so long a time devoted his great talents and knowledge to the public good, should have a permanent place, not merely in the records of the government, but also in the memory of the nation; and Mr. Stevens's book, by making more accessible than heretofore a brief and fair account of his life, will contribute not a little to this desirable end.

A Roundabout Journey 2

The desire to ramble

THERE is no test of a man's ability to write books of travel so severe as writing of Europe; yet even this well-traveled quarter of the world can show itself as fresh as new under the hands of the right person. That Mr. Warner is the right person it is rather superfluous to say at this date. about the Mediterranean, awake or latent in every educated American's breast, finds abundant stimulus in these agreeable papers. Some of these will be recognized as magazine articles that have heretofore appeared; others bear the evidence of having been letters to the journal with which Mr. Warner is connected. They linger for some time about the south coast of France; Avignon, Nimes, Montpellier, Cette, Aigues-Mortes; diverge suddenly to Munich, thence, - 2 A Roundabout Journey. By Charles Dudley WarBoston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.

ner.