and appreciatively, because she does not at all approve of her. Her sympathies are entirely with the good, earnest girl who loves one only, but whom she makes rather more sentimental than is attractive. The moral of the book is the cruelty and wickedness of flirting, and it is well emphasized; but preaching the cruelty and wickedness of her sport will never reform a flirt; to make her see its vulgarity is the only way to reach a vulnerable point in the vain little soul. We do not think that "Freddie" would, in fact, have refused Davenant; still less that Lucy would have finally discarded him-though she would probably have done so very positively for a while, to yield at last to the pressure that he, if he knew anything of women's hearts, would have brought to bear. When women really and irretrievably love men, they do not renounce them for a notion. But it would have blunted the point of Miss Litchfield's moral if Lucy had been thus human. Of a decidedly lower literary quality is The Bar Sinister.1 It is a novel with a purpose, intended to be the Uncle Tom's Cabin of Mormonism. It has not, however, sufficient merit to accomplish very much in the way of rousing people. It is fairly well told; but a story must be more than fairly well told to be much of a reforming power. It is not so violent in setting down all Mormons as depraved brutes as previous books have been, but it adds really nothing new to any one's comprehension of the question, and does not even touch upon its most difficult elements. The two most important novels of the year are yet to be mentioned-The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains and The Rise of Silas Lapham. Both are books of real significance in literary history. They make a curious contrast: the Southern woman's, luxuriant, full of sentiment and lavish diction, and of sympathy with her own characters; and the Northerner's, the very perfection of the observant school. We are disposed to believe the critics who say Miss Murfree's dialect is not absolutely correct; we are disposed to go farther, and question whether the high souls she places among her stolid mountaineers do really exist there, or whether the commonplace types with whom she always surrounds them are not in fact all there are. At all events, whether from life or her own imagination, she has made a beautiful story, highly poetic in its character, and entirely unique. Except for some superficial resemblances, "Charles Egbert Craddock" is not of the Harte school. She enters into her story seriously and sympathetically; they construct theirs from the outside. Whether any suggestion came to her from Harte or not, she is no one's imitator. Her vein is narrow, and we do not know how much longer she can work it; but for the present it is even increasing in promise. But It is very gratifying, too, to be able to say, after all the wonderful work Mr. Howells has done, that perhaps his last book is the best of all. It is always possible to criticise Howells: to say that he sometimes oversteps the line of good taste; that he is at bottom cynical and never heartily sympathizes with his characters, and so fails to catch in his stories the final glow of secret fire that would make them great and very great. it is much better to appreciate what Mr. Howells is, than to seek out the few things that he is not. He is the most significant figure in American literature today, and still on the up-grade; he is the man who has given American novekwriting its standing; who has achieved some virtues of insight and of expression that are new to literature. It is impossible to do justice to the precision and perfection with which he "takes off" 1 The Bar Sinister. A Social Study. New York: Cassell & Co. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by A. every-day life and speech; and more than that, L. Bancroft & Co. * The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. By Charles Egbert Craddock. Boston & New York: he has only to turn his scrutiny upon the most bare and unromantic phase of life, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. For sale in San Fran- and the reader sees it in its true light, as it cisco by Chilion Beach. appears to the one that is living it. When was the romance of business-the anxiety and pain and desire that do, in fact, make business life almost as full of human emotion as love affairs-so brought out, as in The Rise of Silas Lapham? Moreover, there is a warmer quality in this than in any previous book-a movement toward the higher plane yet, that his admirers have always longed to see him rise to. It must be granted that The Rise of Silas Lapham ends unsatisfactorily-the general criticism to that effect seems to us just. The enthusiasm and in terest with which the reader follows it along, receive an impalpable chill in the last chap-. ter. It is hard to say why, for the conclusion is well judged; but there seems to be a relaxation of the author's own interest-the writing sounds if he had grown tired of his characters, and meant to hustle them out of the way as soon as he could, and had done it a little too hastily for dignified exit from the stage. Nor can we acquiesce in his handling of one minor point-the giving the sympathy of third parties to the sister who openly took a man's suit for granted without warrant, instead of to the one who had kept silence, and allowed her sister to arrogate to herself the lover whom both desired. Mr. Howells's own sympathies are apparently with Penelope, and we think he would have been more true to nature if he had turned those of all except the parents the same way. It is hard, too, to believe that proud New England rural people, like the Laphams, would ever have let a suspicion of Irene's discomfiture reach the Coreys. But waiving criticisms, it remains that both the love-romance and the business romance are carried through with an almost unparalleled comprehension of character and feeling, and perfection in expressing them. Lapham himself is, of course, the central figure, and nothing could be more perfect than the rough man of success, all whose gentlemanly virtues at bottom cannot make him agreeable. No social study has ever made so clear the inevitable differentiations that create themselves in even a democratic society. The new editions of old novels that we mentioned above are of Uncle Tom's Cabin1 1 Uncle Tom's Cabin. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach. and The Scarlet Letter-editions neat in appearance and clear in typography, though their object is cheapness of price. The one is preceded by an "account of the work, by the author," and the other has an introduction by G. P. Lathrop. We have, besides, a translation of Balzac's Père Goriot, the first volume, we take it, of a beautiful edition of his complete works. We postpone any review of the translation till it is farther advanced. There remains to be noticed a collection of the Saxe Holm Stories,* the popular interest in which has been renewed by Mrs. Jackson's death. No authoritative statement of her authorship of them has been made, but little doubt seems to be felt that she had at least a share in them. To us, it seems that, however unlike her later fiction they undoubtedly are, it cannot be questioned that the same hand was in them and in the "No Name" novels now acknowledged as Mrs. Jackson's. Mercy Philbrick and Draxy Miller are sisters. The insistence upon love of beauty, and upon extreme sensitiveness to impressions, are identical in the acknowledged and unacknowledged writings. The very details of people's behavior, their ways of adorning their rooms, coincide. The stories are not up to the reputation of "H. H." "Joe Hale's Red Stockings," for a simple trifle, and "How One Woman kept her Husband," for a wise and powerful bit of fact or fiction, are simply and strongly told. But the rest, though they always possess some good qualities, have more or less crudity and a sort of unreal attitude. There are dreadful bits of bad taste in dress and furnishing, as in the dress embroidered with a lapful of pond lilies; but these are not without parallel in "Mercy Philbrick's Choice." "H. H." must have been too good a critic not to know that these stories did not represent her real powers, or her deliberate taste. 2 The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach. 8 Père Goriot. By Honoré de Balzac, Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co. 4 Saxe Holm Stories. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1885. with the intellectual ends of education, that all teaching should be closely connected with religion. The drift of the best opinion seems to be away from this belief, and in favor of conducting education as entirely for its own sake as building a bridge, leaving religious training to the home, the church, and the AN important event in the history of the State has just taken place, in the appointment of a president to the State University. If the new president-who is an astronomer of high rank-prove to possess executive qualities equal to his scientific attainments, we may look to see a new era open for the University. It is necessary that a college president-religious press. The necessity, too, of finding and very much more a University president should be a man of catholic interests, peculiarly well balanced between the demands of science and let ters; a man of tact, who "gets along with" people well; and a man of great administrative capacity. Although Professor Holden is a specialist, he may well prove to possess all these qualities. Everything that is known of him to this State is admirable, and the friends of the University are awaiting his advent with high hopes. We cannot but note with a good deal of misgiving the recent action of the Presbyterian denomination in this State toward establishing a denominational college, The State already contains, besides its own University, two Methodist colleges, and the Baptist denomination has already committed itself to the plan of a Baptist college; there is the new Mills College for girls; and there are still other "colleges," with power to give degrees, whose existence we know only from the pages of reports. Now, while it is probably true that this State can scarcely afford to support but one institution for the higher education, that if all the funds were put into the State University, it would still be little enough, and if all the students were sent there, they would receive a broader education than at any of the lesser colleges, and a degree of more value; still, we have no criticism to make of two supplements to the State Universityone, a girls' college; the other, a religious college. For while the education of girls with boys has produced none of the direful results prophesied, the majority of parents will not, for a generation or two, believe that it does not, and their girls will go uned ucated unless they can be educated in a girls' college; and while the State University does not, in fact, have a demoralizing effect upon the religious faith of students, there are many who will not believe that it does not, and whose sons would lose a college training altogether were a religious college inaccessible. Moreover, while the religious prejudice against the University is largely temporary, produced by foolish and hasty talk in the papers and founded on erroneous information, there is a much more sound and permanent reason for the existence of religious colleges: that is, the permanent conviction of a great number of intelligent people, who are in sympathy ground on which Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and agnostic can unite, enforces this secular view of education. But so great a number remain who cannot acquiesce in it, and have consistent and intelligent reasons for not doing so, that even in a small population there is reason enough for the diversion of strength from the University to a single Christian college, provided that this college can be made a good one. But unless it can be made an honestly good one, according to the severest standards, it should be let alone; and for the existence of a college for each sect we can see no excuse. Some of the noblest colleges in the country, it is true, were founded by a single denomination and are still controlled by it; but we do not recall an instance in which more than one of the sort has attained any considerable rank within a limited area, and with a small college popu. lation to draw upon. There may be a difference between Greek syntax or trigonometry viewed in a Christian light, and the same things in an agnostic light; but hardly between the Methodist and the Baptist views of them; while the multiplication of denominational colleges not only tends to weaken each one by division of forces, and to narrow education by treating trifling differences as important, but to discredit the denominations themselves by bringing the degrees of their colleges into disrepute. A matter of $50,000 or $75,000 is scraped up-enough to endow a single professorship in a good college, or even to start in modest fashion an excellent preparatory school-and an attempt made, which must necessarily be futile with any such sum of money, to take a creditable stand in the family of colleges. What with inadequate means for professorships, forcing the managers to look to those whose denominational zeal is high, irrespective of other qualifications, and with the natural temptation to find places in the college for those whom the denomination honors as vigorous church workers (whose very activity in ecclesiastical lines must have more or less interfered with scholarship), it is almost impossible to give any standing at all to one of these meagerly-endowed colleges. Where it is the only one on the ground, no endowment can be too small, if joined with endless energy and self-sacrifice and tenacity, to start with. So far from despising the day of small things in such a case, nothing is more to be honored; as in the case of the old College of California. But when entered upon merely for the sake of denominational difference, such struggles cease to be heroic. NEVERTHELESS, we do not underrate the difficulties in the way of denominational union in building a college. An attempt has been made already to establish a Christian college here by cooperation of the denominations, but it proved hopelessly futile. The fault is not so often in the projectors of the college as in the money-contributing laity, who take no interest in providing means for a union college, but respond fairly well to appeals for one owned by their own denomination. It is perhaps true, as it has been said, that it is easier to get money for six denominational schools than one-sixth of the money for a union one. Still, we think this and other difficulties are things which should be contended with, not yielded to. One denomination--the Methodist-has already the ground, and has made a respectable beginning, with the great advantage of a liberalminded man for a president. It would seem to us that the right course for both the Presbyterians and Baptists to take would be, either to make a very earnest effort to unite forces with this Methodist beginning, concessions being made on both sides, or else, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians, to put their money each into a good denominational academy. Apart from the general objection to multiplication of denominational colleges, however, the plan of the Presbyterians seems peculiarly judicious and promising; for there is no intention of scraping up money enough for one professorship, and then setting up a weakling college full-blown; but of allowing their theological seminary, now well endowed with over a quarter of a million, to expand downward, as demand arises, into college classes, thus allowing a college to create itself by a natural and healthful process of evolution. So judicious does this seem, that were not the Methodist college already on the ground, we should say that in this extension of the Presbyterian seminary lay the the promise of a nucleus for the future religious college of the coast, to which the other denominations should bring accretions. It is true that the connection with the seminary would tend to produce a decided sectarianism, unfavorable to union; but the experience of Princeton, for instance, shows that intimate connection with a theological seminary need not prevent a college's expanding beyond strictly sectarian bounds. ists to hear addresses from a number of the women candidates for seats in the Chamber of Deputies. I am told by the French themselves that, taken as a whole, French women are more capable, businesslike, energetic, and pushing than the men, and I believe it to be true. Of course, they don't surpass the race masculine in the higher reaches of the arts, sciences, belles-lettres, etc.; but in all the every-day, ordinary occupations of life-the keeping of little shops, the running of small farms, hotels, etc., etc.— they are "the man of the house." Sometimes it's a very large business they manage, too. For instance, there is an immense dry goods establishment here, the Bon Marché, where you can buy not alone dry goods of every description-but all necessaries for house furnishing of every sort and kind, and where there are hundreds of employés. The head owner of this really grand and interesting establishment is a woman-and a good woman, too. Her employés form one large family, who all board and room under the one roof of the great store. She takes care of them if they are sick, provides amusements for their evenings, and, I am told, looks after them morally as well as physically. Then another woman is at the head of the Duval Restaurants, which are not to be numbered, they are so many. So you can see from all this, as also the history of the France of all ages has shown, when women meddle with politics here, it's a meddle not to be despised. So I went to the meeting the other evening, expecting to be really interested and enlightened—and I was. As we went into the hall, various campaign documents were handed us, and those given to me were offered with a "Voici, Citoyenne," that gave me an instant First Revolution, Robespierre sensation; the feeling didn't go away, either, and two or three events of the evening deepened it much. There were present a large audience-more than half men; but after a few words of introduction by one of the Republican Socialist party who had convened the meeting, a president, three vice presidents, and secretary, all women, were chosen, and all was supposed to be ready for the speeches of the candidates. But first a prominent member of the party wished to make some explanatory remarks—a handsome gray-haired old gentleman he was, and I expected his simple appearance, so benevolent and dignified, would obtain for him a quiet hearing. But no; it was time for the candidatesses to speak, and no manly discourse was wanted, so he was at first politely asked to retire. He refused, whereupon, in one body, the president, the Women and Politics in Paris. three vice presidents, the secretary, and a candidate made one rush, seized the old gentleman, and in less [The following account of a women's political time than it takes me to tell it, he was dragged, pulled, meeting in Paris is from a private letter written by or pushed off the stage and behind the scenes. an American lady sojourning in that city.] last glimpse of him was just as he disappeared; someMy dear C: I was so stupid the other day how, he had managed to get hold of a chair, which, when I wrote to you as quite to forget to tell you about a political meeting I had been to the night before. This was a meeting called by the Republican Social The as he backed out, he held up before him, as some sort of protection. That was the end of him and his speech. In the meantime, the president, the three man. vice presidents, and the candidate calmly returned to their places, paying no attention to the ten or twenty men that had mounted the platform and were rushing about, evidently in a wild search for the captive As for the audience, all was dire confusion, and for half an hour nothing was done, nothing could be heard but cries of "Ou est Legru?" (the name of the old gentleman); "Madame la Presidente, ou est Legru?" The first vice president rung wildly the president's big bell, which was supposed to command order. The president's baby cried, and some kind soul in the audience handed up baby's bottle. That tickled the audience into a better humor, and after some time of waves of noise and intervals of comparative quiet, it became sufficiently quiet to allow a commencement of the speeches. The There were some half-dozen. Every one of the speakers spoke as easily as though she was in her own room at home, with but an audience of one. All were interesting-that is to say, without an atom of dullness-on the contrary, bright, sparkling, vivacious. All used excellently smooth, pure language, but in more than one case they were illogical. most interesting speaker for me was an interloperthat is to say, not a candidate. They called her Louise. She is absolutely the type of the women of the First Revolution or the Commune, I am sure. She is an avowed anarchist; and that there were many anarchists in the audience was proved by the attention and applause she received. I should think she was twenty-six years old. She had very black hair and eyes, a thin, sallow face, a mouth so clearly cut, so determined. Her words flowed faster than thought almost, gestures accompanying every phrase; the whole air, the intonation, the manner, absolute defiance. So when finally she said: "But why do we listen to these candidates? What do we want of candidates? What do we want of a House of Deputies? We want no rulers, but liberty, equality "— one was not surprised. It hardly took one by surprise, when, as finale to her speech. she descended suddenly by table and chair from the platform to deal summary and personal vengeance on some one of the audience who had dared in an insulting manner to interrupt her, and who paid for his temerity by being obliged to retire earlier than he would have preferred. Oh, it's a strangely undisciplined, chaotic thingthis sister republic of ours. The present government is too good, and, alas ! too weak. They don't dare insist. For instance, at a large political meeting last Sunday, held in the Merchants' Exchange, nothing could be accomplished--all was simply one dreadful row. They broke to pieces chairs and tables, the platform erected for the occasion, took the water decanter and glasses-everything they could get hold of-to right with, finally resorting to fire ple-and they are many-are so easy; they wish for quiet and peace so much that they won't even fight for it, and so the Anarchists and the Socialists and the Communists get the upper hand. And it's such a shame to think of the peril for all the treasures of art --for all the beautiful parks and noble buildings of this most magnificent city of the world. Politics over here are far more exciting than with us; for here, alas, everything may turn in incredibly short time to tragedy. There is always the overhanging war cloud-while with us it's only wordsmuch noise; but we need to have no fear of ourselves, or of encroaching neighbors. There's no doubt about it, we're a wonderful people; made up of so many diverse and contradictory elements, and yet pursuing the even tenor of our national way, accepting grand changes of party with such unruffled serenity of the national temper. We have great cause for thankfulness-we Americans-as well as for pride. L. H. T. Paris, September, 1885. With Gloves. Go, happy little messengers, To think a little senseless kid The passion-prompted clutch. And if I chance to press full hard The tender hand you hold, Pray do not let your mistress feel That I am over-bold. C. A. M. Tecumseh not Killed by Colonel Johnson. EDITOR OVERLAND MONTHLY: The June number of the "Century Magazine contained a communication, from which it appeared almost conclusively proved that the noted Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, was killed by Colonel Richard M. Johnson. I ask for a few lines in your valuable magazine, to give publicity to the story told me by an eyewitness of his fall, who was with him almost daily during the three years previous to his death. Let me say, in passing, that may not be generally known just where the famous chief was born. He was born in the year 1770, between the third and the fourth moons, near Station Pond-a body of water on Mad River, in Green County, Ohio, some four miles south of Springfield, and within a mile and a half northwest of the town of Fairfield, Greene County, Ohio, where I was born in 1836, and near where I lived until 1852. During these, my boyhood |