HON. HILARY A. HERBERT (Author of a new survey of the "Abolition" movement from a Southerner's viewpoint)

of the Navy in President Cleveland's cabinet. Although he served in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, Mr. Herbert, soon after Appomattox, reached the conclusion that slavery was wrong and on announcing this conclusion to his father was surprised to learn that his mother, who had

died some years before the war, had been in early life an avowed emancipationist, but that she had never felt at liberty to discuss slavery after the rise of the new Abolitionists and the Nat Turner insurrection. "The Abolition Crusade and its Consequences" is a book of 250 pages, conceived in a spirit of loyalty to the Constitution and government of our reunited country. Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the historian, while unable to agree altogether with Mr. Herbert's presentation of the subject, declares that the book is "pervaded by practical knowledge and candor," and may profitably be read by the younger generation. No one questions Mr. Herbert's patriotism or his intention to state fairly and without bitterness the facts of history as the loyal Southerner of our time sees them.

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One of the most charming and widely discussed magazine features of the past few months has been a series of articles by a Russo-Jewish immigrant girl named Mary Antin, the An Immigrant story of whose life presents a picture Girl's Story of unusual human strength and pathos, and told with literary distinction. entire autobiographical story now appears in book form under the title "The Promised Land: The Autobiography of a Russian Immigrant." was born, I have lived and have been made over." With these words the writer begins the introduction to her book. Therefore, she says, "the person that was before I was made over is the real heroine, and since my life I have still to live, and her life ended when mine began, therefore I write the biography of her who I was." Mary Antin was born less than thirty years ago in Polotzk, Russia, a town within the Jewish Pale, and spent her childhood there. Her family was driven by the pressure of poverty to the United States. twelve years of age she entered the public schools of Boston, and after a brilliant progress through these schools and Barnard College, New York, she has, by sheer force of merit and native gifts, attained a conspicuous place among women thinkers and writers of her adopted country. Married to a professor in Columbia University, she rightfully takes her place in the intellectual life of America. Her life, she says, is a concrete illustration of a multitude of statistical facts. "Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. . . . We are strands of the cable that binds the old world to the new, as the ships that brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings." Further on, she adjures the American people to love your country understandingly, you should know what I have been and what I have become. In the book of my life is written the measure of your country's growth and the answer to your doubts." The human pathos and the joy of the story, the remarkable achievement of the lone immigrant girl, and the simple, direct charm of the style make number of illustrations, chiefly from photographs. this a book of unusual individuality. There are a

creations of Dickens. They stand out in sharp basrelief against the general movement of the novel; they have joined the long procession of the enduring personages of fiction. Tante, the genius, voices the creed of the dominant self that sweeps away all obstacles that hinder its triumphant progress: the other speaks the creeds of the selfless, the meek, whose souls "inherit the earth."

Unrest in

The analysis of the causes of marital unrest is, in varying phases, the theme of many of the season's novels from the pens of women. "Joseph in Jeopardy," by Frank Danby (Mrs. Married Life Julia Frankau), is an argument as to whether modern marriage is a kind of imprisonment with the husband and wife on parole and the servants as "warders," or whether for other than moral malefactors it is the larger freedom, the way out of infinite alarms and perplexities. The "Joseph" of the book is Dennis Passiful, an Englishman "in trade," who marries rather blindly the exceedingly plain and domestic daughter of his wealthy employer. When the first novelty of marriage has yielded to the routine of domesticity, he becomes involved in a flirtatious affair with the beautiful Lady Diana Wayne, who possesses all the feminine charms save one. This one the charm of innate refinement and purity

G. A. BIRMINGHAM

one may read to the end of restfulness and refreshment of mind.

Character Studies

The English novel, "Carnival," by Compton Mackenzie (Appletons), has been a noteworthy novel of the season in America as well as in England. It gives the life of a girl who grows up in the ranks of a London ballet school and becomes a chorus girl. She is not wayward, only a light-hearted little creature who loves life and who is impulsive without having very much wisdom. Mr. Harold Begbie author of many helpful books and novels, publishes "The Challenge" (Doran), a story dealing with the life of a woman in India, the main theme being the rebirth of a moral consciousness from the psychological standpoint. "The Drunkard," by Guy Thorne (Sturgis & Walton), is a powerful study of the downward course of a brilliant man of letters who has become an inebriate. It is a document rather than a novel. It fulfils the purpose of a tract on temperance, which is the end of its usefulness as outlined by the author.

POPULAR NOVELS BY AMERICAN WOMEN

The large sales of Anne Douglas Sedgwick's "Tante" (Century) afford evidence of the growth of popular taste for serious fiction. "Tante,' without being a truly great novel, Clever Charac- has all the qualities of greatness-a terization dignified theme, excellent characterization, brilliant technique, and intellectual abundance. Madame Von Marnitz (Tante), the half-Polish, half-Spanish genius, the "world's greatest pianist," and her companion Mrs. Talcott, the Maine woman with the "wallet" face, as characterizations are not cast into obscurity by even the

COMPTON MACKENZIE