title As It Seems to Me, (1) and A Preachment On Going to Church, (2) by George Bernard Shaw. Aside from their literary value, which is significant, these books must tempt every lover of fine books alone by their artistically quaint get-up. They are a delight to the eye-truly marvels of modern printing and book-making art; inspirations of an artistic refined taste. So perfectly beautiful that they must make every bibliophilist go into ecstasies over them. They must be seen to be fully appreciated.

not show its usefulness and do it credit any better than by quoting from its contents the following chapters New and prominent writers of the day (including James Lane Allen, Edward Bellamy, Hall Caine, Richard Harding Davis, H. S. Merriman, S. Weir Mitchell, H. Sienkiewicz, H. G. Wells, Zangwill and others). Obituary (including an excellent article on Alphonse Daudet). Dramatizations of Current Fiction - The American Serials of the Year-Book Production in the United StatesThe Literary Output of 1897 — The Best Selling Books of 1897- The Publishing Book-Clubs of the United interesting book by A. Growoll: States (a list taken from that very American Book Clubs, their beginings and History, and a Bibliography of their Publications) — Victo

rian Literature: a Retrospect 100 Best Books for a Village LibraryDirections for Securing Copyright— The Principal Libraries in the U. S.

A Short Glossary of Typographical Terms-Correction of ProofsSizes of Type.

Facts About Bookworms.(*) — All that relates to books and bookishness has been so often and so thoroughly chronicled that the discovery of a fresh path in this well-worn field is no easy matter. Yet such a path is found in the trail of the bookworm, and it has been followed with success by the Rev. J. F. X. O'Connor, who now sets forth the results of his

* Facts about Bookworms. Their history in literature and work in libraries. By Rev. J. F. X. O'Connor, S. J. Illustrated, cloth. Edition limited to 750 copies. Price $1.80. By mail $1.90.

investigations in a little volume that is an important original contribution to the literature of books and libraries.

The bookworm, of the non-biped variety, has long furnished food for speculation, but of its actual history and characteristics little that is definite has been known. The sum total of the knowledge gleaned concerning it, from Aristotle down, was set forth by Blades in his "Enemies to Books"; but much of this gleaning was pure fancy. These conjectures and the sprightly remarks of Andrew Lang on the subject are familiar to most book lovers, but they have served rather to invest the bookworm with an atmosphere of fable than to lead to a serious investigation of the subject. "And yet," says Father O'Conor, "I may be allowed to say, upon positive knowledge, that the bookworm is no rarity, but is a real ity and doing most decided mischief."

As to the detection of bookworms, Father O'Conor says:

Inspect closely the back of the bound volume. There you may discover little smooth, round holes that could have been made with a large needle. Sometimes these holes are at the lower end of the back of the volume; sometimes they will be found along the edges of the back. Should the back seem to be perfect, then open the book. Between the cover and the fly-leaf you may perceive a little ridge or heap of dustred, gray or white, according to the color of the binding. If you do per

ceive such a ridge, the bookworm has been or is in your book. With the point of a knife raise the paper pasted to the cover near the dust heap, and there you will find a Sitodrepa, or Ptinus, or Anthrenus. Clear him out at once; scrape the book until you are sure there are no unhatched eggs left."

Prevention is another matter. There is no lack of suggestions, none of which are especially practical. Pyrethrum powder, scattered on books or shelves, camphor, fumigation by tobacco, the use of poisoned paste in binding, all these have been recommended, but experience shows that the only solution that promises effectiveness is to be found in a thorough overhauling of the library twice or thrice each year, and the individual dusting of each separate book; not with a duster, but with a cloth. Dust, poor ventilation, and lack of light furnish the bookworm's element, and by the elimination of these he also may be eliminated.

Space does not allow us to go into the discussion of the book as deeply as we wish. It is certainly an interesting little volume, particularly for all bookworms of the human species, and valuable to all who have to deal with books.

The material the result of long and patient observation and research

is almost entirely new. It is handled most attractively, and the facts presented answer fully and finally the oft-repeated question, Are there bookworms?-(From the Publishers' Weekly.)

THE FIRST VIOLIN. The dramatization of the charming novel by Jessie Fothergill "The First Violin," which has lately been produced by Richard Mansfield, that gifted and perhaps most sincere and thinking of all living American actors, and his excellent company in New York and before in Boston, has met with such contradictory criticism, that this alone may be taken as a proof of its intrinsic interest. In Boston the play was considered almose a failure, while in New York, although having had only a comparatively short run, it was decidedly a success. And while some critics de

nounced the play most unmercifully, others could not praise it high enough. We therefore wish to quote the following article by Joseph I. C. Clarke, one of the authors of the play, which appeared lately in that excellent, up-to-date and crisp crisp weekly The Criterion :

"Ordinarily speaking it would be a risky thing to allow authors to criticise the pieces to which their names were attached.

"It is probably true that no one can appreciate the good points of a picture as well as the artist who painted it; but he would be a dangerous authority on the points wherein it fell short, for he would be the last to admit that it had any shortcomings at all.

"The case is somewhat different with The First Violin,' credited to

'J. I. C. Clarke and Merridan Phelps' as presented at the Garden Theatre recently by our great actor, Richard Mansfield, and his talented company.

"To no one more than the writer were the various beauties of that

masterpiece a frank surprise and a supreme revelation. The critics of the cultured city of Boston had done their best to tell what the piece was like, but even the delicately sharpened pen of Henry Austin Clapp-the Francisque Sarcey of the Modern Athens-failed in the effort. Mere It was too much for him. words could not convey his feelings, and wild stories reach us of that polished essayist's despair over his failure to do the dramatization justice and yet keep within the limits. of polite English.

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'But the public-the just, unerring public-was at no such loss. It did not have to translate the gurgles of its emotions, its tears, its laughter, its wholesale enthusiasm into concrete speech. All it had to do was to go to the Hollis Street Theatre, cram the house, wallow in the sensations of the evening and retire to its homes cheered, enlightened and refreshed, and crying for more. It did all this, and is apparently bent on the same line of conduct in New York.

"Why?

"God knows.

"When Miss Jessie Fothergill wrote the romance on which the play

is founded she was probably not aware what an overwhelming appeal she had made to the average human heart. The critics who reviewed her book on its first appearance did not discover it. They called it a 'woman's book.' It was inchoate, fortuitous, naïve. It was warm with an atmosphere of music and Kunst Leben, and its self-sacrificing hero was everything that a young lady could desire. It had 'love-scenes' It had 'love-scenes' twenty pages long, and it parcelled out rewards and punishments for good and evil life with the rigid justice of the Providence that presides over the melodramas of d'Ennery, Mr. Sims, and the late Augustus Harris.

"It was printed by the hundred thousand and has been read in rapture by the million.

"What a temptation to make a play!

"How it came about that the undersigned labored with the theme in the winter months gone by and presented his play to Mr. Mansfield last January is so purely a personal matter that a discreet veil may be dropped over it.

"It went with Mr. Mansfield on the road. It was rehearsed in the wild woolly West, in the warm and sunny South, in the cold, clear East. It It underwent processes of charming change in every locality. All the All the tutelary spirits of the regions it traversed lent a hand in the transmogrification. Lock up the manuscript as they might while Mr. Mansfield was playing his repertoire, directly it was taken out of its receptacle it was found to sparkle with new epi

grams, to scintillate with new jokes, to be injected with delightful fables. Things that were at the end of one act were found at the beginning of another. The stage manager, the property-man, the leading man and the various leading ladies lived lives of wonderment. They took turns in watching as if it was the continuous performance of a spiritualistic seance. They suspected each other. The finger of suspicion day after day pointed in different directions. Augustus Pitou, the dramatist of Chauncey Olcott; Ramsay Morris, the Sardou of Andy Mack; Bronson Howard, Augustus Thomas, Sydney Rosenfeld, Grattan Donnelly, and John A. Stevens, the author of "Unknown," were in turn suspected.

"Last week in Boston all these suspicions evaporated, for the miraculous road agent of the piece proved to be none other than Merridan Phelps.

"When this was known everybody breathed easier.

"For Mr. Mansfield holds Merridan Phelps on a level of admiration with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Archibald Gunter and William Shakespeare.

"How happy I should be to have gained a collaborator without any of the compunctions of the ordinary co-author; who, no matter how he has massacred one's lines, overturned one's situations, knocked one's climaxes, or eliminated one's characters, yet has perserved a simulacrum of the thing one conceivedand, notwithstanding, left something that people will flock to see.

"In vain, therefore, the hand up

The nearest thing to real art is nature; the nearest thing to nature is art; the nearest thing to acting is the living of life; the nearest thing to life is the art of acting life.

And for this reason the expression "a school of acting" is all wrong. The world-and there are many discriminating critics in that sweeping word "world"-has grown accustomed to saying that there are "schools of acting," and I, personally, have been asked repeatedly to tell of the difference between the

* From the May number of The Puritan, a journal for gentlewomen.

I think that there is no school of acting. I think there is no difference between the dramatic art of America and England. I think art is art the world through. I believe that the drama and the execution of its artists is the same wherever the English language is spoken. If we are students--English or American, German or French, Russian or Chinese-what does it matter? We are all children, and the people called 'actors" are playing a game. The other children know it and are looking on, and if the game is well played they approve, if not, they

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run away.

And what do those who speak of "schools of acting" mean?

Some one actor has had to struggle more fiercely with poverty than all the rest, and has become hard, pedantic and measured. He has sufficient charm to entertain people, is placed at the head of his own company, and becomes a factor in the theatrical world. He leads what is called a school of acting.

Another man's wrongs have made him bitter, passionate, forceful, and God has given him a pleasant voice and a fine body and a magnetic gift of expression. He, in time, resolves himself into a self constituted school of acting.

We see these people in every character they portray; we learn to know that when we go to see any character impersonated by them, it will be to see them impersonate the character. We know in advance that when we are to see them in a line of different