Comment on New Books
Literature and Criticism. The Yellow Book, an Illustrated Quarterly. (Copeland & Day, Boston.) The merry-go-round of literary history brings back the old illustrated annual in this Yellow Book. To be sure, onr great-grandaunts would have thought the pictures puzzles, and the text somewhat unedited, but the general principle is the same, — a collection of heterogeneous stories, poems, and sketches, of the current manner, and detached engravings by the artists in vogue. Only, in this case the fashion seems to be that of day after to-morrow, and that is two days away. Much may happen to-morrow ; possibly a return to nobility, purity, and high ideals in literature and art. We commend to some of his associates in The Yellow Book Mr. Waugh’s vigorous contribution on Reticence in Literature. — The volume of The Century Illustrated Magazine, comprising the six numbers ending with April, 1894 (The Century Co.), is noticeable for the absence of serial fiction ; Mark Twain’s novel, running through five months, being the only continued story except Mrs. Foote’s Cœur d’Alene, begun in February. Nor is fiction generally overabundant. The group of Lowell’s posthumous papers and the series of illustrations from American artists, with Cole’s examples of Old Dutch Masters, belong to the permanent in this contemporary miscellany of good things. — Studies of the Creek Poets, by John Addington Symonds. (A. & C. Black, London.) This is a third edition, which Mr. Symonds prepared just before his death, of a work which, in less thorough form, he published a score of years ago. The exuberance of his æsthetic nature is well illustrated in these two volumes, which discourse of the whole succession of Greek poetry with a regard to literary art and philosophy. Symonds brought to bear upon his studies a mind well stored with a varied knowledge, but his own strong passion for beauty constantly shapes and directs his criticism. Readers trained in severer schools will be likely to weary now and then of his affluence, but this pleasing work is likely to attract some who would have the ancient world brought easily to their very doors. — Specimens of Greek Tragedy, translated by Goldwin Smith. (Macmillan.) Of the two volumes of specimens, one is given to Æschylus and Sophocles, the other to Euripides. Mr. Smith, by his brief argument and headnotes, and then by his wise selection of scenes, manages to give more unity to each specimen than one might suppose ; and taken together, the pair of books makes a most admirable companion to a history or critical study of the Greek tragedies. The diction is strong without being rough, and the dignity is often one of beauty as well as of simplicity. The volume devoted to Euripides is perhaps the more satisfactory ; but then Euripides presents the modern translator with scenes and sentiments which readily find English equivalents. — The Jacobean Poets, by Edmund Gosse. (Scribners.) In this volume of The University Series Mr. Gosse treats the poets who came immediately before the men considered in his From Shakespeare to Pope. This time, we trust, there is no Mr. Churton Collins prepared with a Quarterly article to demolish Mr. Gosse’s utterances, for they seem to us to draw clearly the distinctions between the Elizabethan and the Jacobean poets, and to give as well as can be given by writing about writers a conception of the things they have written and the manner thereof. This is a gentle art in which Mr. Gosse is known to be proficient. — A Commentary on the Writings of Henrik Ibsen, by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen. (Macmillan.) A long introduction gives many of the facts of Ibsen’s life, and some account of his historical plays. The social dramas and the poems are treated in the separate chapters that follow. The book does not seem one that would have been very hard for any devoted reader of Ibsen to write, for the greater part of it is given to retelling in narrative form the stories of the plays. When passages are literally reproduced by translations Mr. Boyesen’s own are most frequently used, and when they are in verse one wishes some one else had done them. The value of the book will be appreciated especially by those who would know what Ibsen is without reading him for themselves. — Ghazels from the Divan of Hafiz, done into English by Justin Huntly McCarthy. (Imported by Scribners.) “A brace of good comrades, a flagon of wine, leisure, and a book, and a corner of the garden.” These, to Hafiz as to Omar, “ were Paradise enow,” and are, with the addition of a Beloved from whom the poet is separated, the burden of the ghazels rendered in poetic English prose by Mr. McCarthy. “ Whether the Beloved is Spirit or very Flesh, whether the Wine is the Blood of the Grape or the Ichor of Doctrine,” the translator leaves the reader to decide. We may not discuss deep significances here, nor point out more than the constant presence in the book of the spirit which in Omar is most distinctly Oriental. — Overheard in Arcady, by Robert Bridges. (Scribners.) It appears that one of the pleasures of Arcady is the discussion of novelists by the characters they have created, and that Mr. Bridges has been fortunate enough to overhear and report a number of these conversations. As readers of these contributions of Droch to Life will remember, the creators usually have the sympathy and liking of the created, so that, in spite of some poking of fun, the body of criticism contained in the book is friendly. When the first freshness of Mr. Bridges’ plan wears off, one finds that the humor of the conversations is a less important part of them than their expression of critical opinion, usually shrewd and true. In the Stockton talk, between the Lady and the Tiger through the bars that separate their adjoining rooms, the idea of humor, by way of exception, is constant to the end ; and in the illustrations by three of Life’s cleverest artists it is conspicuous. On the whole, the book is a successful jeu d’esprit, agreeable, no doubt, in large measure by virtue of its very contemporary quality. — English Prose, Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, and General Introductions to each Period, edited by Henry Craik. Vol. II. (Macmillan.) When the first volume of this work appeared, we made mention of its excellences, and of the shortcomings inevitably due to the attempt at handling English prose after the manner of Ward’s English Poets. With no loss of success, this volume covers the period from the Sixteenth Century to the Restoration. — The Binding of Books, an Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled Bindings, by Herbert P. Horne. (Imported by Scribners.) “ The art of book-binding depends,” according to the author, “ upon a prolonged series of minute particulars.” And so, from the nature of the author’s plan, does the description of the art. After a detailed account of processes in general, the writer concerns himself especially with the work of early masters of the craft in Italy, France, and England. The book is for bibliophiles, or rather for persons — let us not lose the opportunity of using an apt and beautiful word — of distinctly bibliopegistic tastes ; and to these this latest volume of the Books about Books Series must be of considerable interest.
Poetry and the Drama. Ban and Arrière Ban, a Rally of Fugitive Rhymes, by Andrew Lang. (Longmans.) It is a fair troop of verses which Mr. Lang marshals in this little book. Most of them are of the lighter sort, and many of them are charming. None speak more truly for their author, nor show more faithfully his bookman’s humor and his delicacy of touch, than those in which he champions the cause of Romance. The Tournay of the Heroes — in which the characters of modern realistic fiction joust with the worthies of old books, David Grieve, in the end, falling beneath the lance of Porthos — is particularly a delight. — Plays, by John Davidson. (Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London ; Stone & Kimball, Chicago.) The title-page proceeds with tise definition, “Being: An Unhistorical Pastoral : A Romantic Farce : Bruce A Chronicle Play : Smith A Tragic Farce : and Scaramouch in Naxos A Pantomime.” This list is given in full, because, in a few lines, there is perhaps no better way of suggesting the nature of Mr. Davidson’s dramatic work. In his plays he is one of the Neo-Elizabethans who, with the help of Mr. Beardsley, are adorning the last days of the Victorian era. He is equipped with a wealth of imagination and fancy which would have stood in excellent stead to a minor poet earlier in the era, for such an one would have been likely to eschew the fantastic as diligently as Mr. Davidson courts it. We should bear the present dispensation with patience, however, in the hope that the new Elizabethans will do more for us than they have yet shown the possibility of doing, and give us a new Shakespeare. — A Poet’s Portfolio, Later Readings, by William Wetmore Story. (Houghton.) The same He and She who read and talked about the verses in a Poet’s Portfolio three years ago take up their pleasant pastime again, and discuss many of the thoughts that come to persons who look back instead of forward upon life. The joys and sorrows alike are tempered with a soft light, and the whole picture of age that the book presents is one of gentleness and charm. — A Song of Companies, and Other Poems, by O. C. Stevens. (H. C. Cady Printing Co., Holyoke, Mass.) We have seen a previous volume by Mr. Stevens, and this seems to us an advance on the same lines, thoughtful pondering on large conceptions, resulting in single lines and passages of fine effect, yet sometimes struggling for expression, and finding vent in somewhat confused forms. Yet no one can read The Company of Children and The Capitol Dome, to name at least two of the poems, without being impressed by the large imagination and the penetrative insight of the poet. — A Sheaf of Poems, by George Perry. (Putnams.) The author of this book was the successor of N. P. Willis in the editorship of the Home Journal, a post he held until his death, six years ago. His verse, as these Collected specimens reveal it, was not included in the succession, for the relation it bears to the verse of Mr. Willis is far more remote than its descent from the spirit of transcendentalism which flourished in Mr. Willis’s time and without his aid. The poems, in their total effect, give true expression to this spirit. — The Bayadere, and Other Sonnets, by Francis Saltus Saltus. (Putnams.) The triple standard of wine, woman, and song is well maintained in this volume. In respect of wine, the series Flasks and Flagons reveals an intimacy with flavors and effects which no novice could boast. In respect of woman, many types from many lands are portrayed as by a student not of books alone. And as for song, it is surely to be said that Mr. Saltus’s skill in sonnet-making is proved beyond question by tlie high average merit of the verse in a collection so large as this. — When Hearts are Trumps, by Tom Hall. (Stone & Kimball.) A pretty little book, full of rhymes which, without the author’s prefatory note, would be known as having appeared in the frivolous weeklies, so to call an estimable class of periodicals. The trouble is that when these rhymes on Cupid and Cupidity —as another verse-maker called his favorite theme — get into a book, without pictures or prose to Uphold them, they seem rather less worth while. One suspects sometimes, even with tlie frivolous weekly in hand, that Lockers are born, not made ; and the suspicion is not allayed by such books of facile verse as this one. — In Various Moods, by M. A. B. Evans. (Putnams.) This is what is popularly known as a dainty volume, for it has a light green-blue cover with a white-andgold back, adorned on its overlapping sides with lyres and arabesque tracery ; and in the modern fashion of criticising Works of one art in terms of another, the inside of the book might, without undue expense of ingenuity, be defined in words that would fit the outside.
Fiction. Life’s Little Ironies, a Set of Tales, with some Colloquial Sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters, by Thomas Hardy. (Harpers.) If this book should fall into the hands of an intelligent person who had never heard of Mr. Hardy or read a word of his writings, — if such a person there be, — what would he say of it ? Perhaps something like this : Some of the tragic tales are memorably tragic, the funny stories are funny, and the skill of the writer is so conspicuous that he must have written many clever books before ; but on the whole I do not care greatly for this one. The stories seem to be the work of a man with a grudge against the world, and with a preference in his writings for the coarser side of human nature. He never lets anything turn out well if he can help it. Sometimes there is a glimmer of hope, and in real life it would stand a fair chance of being the forerunner of a turn for the better ; but here it is used simply to make the inevitable irony more tragic. After all, perhaps I have not a strong enough natural liking for scientific studies in human frailty and helplessness. Certainly these are capital documents of the sort. — The Flower of Forgiveness, and Other Stories, by Flora Annie Steel. (Macmillan.) Mrs. Steel has speedily and surely taken her place as, with one exception, the first of Anglo-Indian story-writers, all other competitors being so far behind these two as to be practically out of the running. Mrs. Steel not only imparts the very atmosphere of India to her slightest sketch, but she can, as it were, look at its life with the eyes and mind of the East, putting herself in the place of those men and women whose destinies have been fixed, it might almost be said, centuries before their birth, so immutable are the laws of caste, custom, prejudice, and superstition. She is a wonderfully cleareyed observer, but a sympathetic, humane, and generous one as well. There is no story in this volume without its own peculiar interest, and all are marked by a natural blending of humor and pathos, artistic reserve, and a certain dramatic effectiveness, but five or six of the sketches will at once be selected by discerning readers as most admirable. Of these, we should be inclined to give the preference to The Footstep of Death, perhaps because it was our first introduction to its author. The tale of the blind old fakeer, begging alms of all that pass by, “in the name of your own God,” waiting through many years In godliness and contentment for the footstep that had brought shame and death to his mistress, — the footstep which will mean death to himself and that other, — is one not easily to he forgotten. — The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. (The Century Co.) Mr. Kipling is a nineteenth-century Æsop. In this spirited, delightful book he has dramatized the beasts of the jungle, the wolf, the tiger, the jackal, the elephant, the panther, and has even associated a man cub with them ; he has entered also into the hide of the camel, the mule, the terrier, and the horse, and all for the sake, not of pointing a moral, but of delineating character, and telling the varied life which goes on just beyond the inner eye of man. Verily man is extending his kingdom of letters. Barye’s animals are hardly more works of art than are Kipling’s. — In Varying Moods, by Beatrice Harraden. (Putnams.) In this little volume Miss Harraden has collected seven of her short stories and sketches, the longest and best being At the Green Dragon, which tells of an episode in the life of a literary gentleman who is accidentally detained for some weeks at a village inn in Shropshire, and of a farmer’s daughter who serves as his amanuensis, — a discontented girl with some liking for books and ambitions beyond her dairy and poultry-yard. The story is told gracefully, sympathetically, and with delicate insight, the minor characters are indicated with a few vivid touches, and the spirit of the whole is refreshingly cheerful and sane. None of the shorter stories will be likely to add materially to the author’s reputation, though there is perhaps none that her admirers would wish omitted, except probably that gruesome study of two madmen, The Umbrella Maker. A word must be said of the pleasant sketch A Bird of Passage, which shows the writer in a vein much lighter than her wont. Miss Harraden contributes a preface to the American edition of the book, giving some hints as to how the various tales came to be written. — With Edged Tools, by Henry Seton Merriman. (Harpers.) Africa is beginning to rival India and Australia as a place where English novelists can send young men to meet with strange adventures and hairbreadth escapes, to perforin deeds of daring, and, above all, to gain exceptionally large fortunes in an astonishingly short time. All these things are accomplished by the hero and sub-hero of this tale, who go back and forth between England and Africa as easily and indifferently as though the West Coast were no farther away than the Riviera. They are urged by love of the same young woman to go in quest of fortune ; the hero being her fiance, the other thinking that he is. She is, in truth, a sad flirt, but the reader hardly takes her sins so seriously as does the author, or feels his joy in her final punishment. The story is spirited, well constructed, and readable, the African portion being especially well done, and there is a good deal of epigrammatic brightness in the dialogue. But Mr. Merriman’s cleverness too often degenerates into artificiality. — F. M. Crawford’s Marion Darehe (Macmillan) is a story of contemporary New York life. Its romantic quality is ingrained, its realism merely superficial, and its local color, though true and distinct, is after all somewhat thin, for Mr. Crawford is preëminently a cosmopolitan. He takes the whole world for his province, and therefore it is small wonder that he cannot know any place and people so intimately as, for instance, Thomas Hardy knows his Wessex and Wessex folk. But in whatever place Mr. Crawford lays his scenes, he has a keen sense for dramatic situation, and this is what redeems Marion Darche from the ordinary. — In The Upper Berth (Putnams) we have Mr. Crawford again. This is the first volume of a new series of long, thin books to be called the Autonym Library, which really strikes us as a rather laborious way of saying what is to be said of the vast majority of books, that they appear under the authors’ own names. Besides the title story, which will be well remembered by many as the first and ghastliest in a book of good ghost stories by various hands, there is one other, By the Waters of Paradise. It is less familiar and less memorable, though the supernatural element is well wrought, and throughout there is much characteristic cleverness.— The Two Salomes, by Maria Louise Pool (Harpers), is the tale of a country girl who in her native New England is almost morbidly conscientious, but who in Florida suddenly loses, or thinks she loses, her sense of right and wrong. Though the narrative might be made plausible enough, it seems curiously improbable through lack of subtlety and self-restraint in plot and characterization. In its local color, however, the story is true. Here, in fact, and in a few scenes of pure pathos and rather exaggerated humor, the book is at its best. In style, it is light and rapid, and readable to the end. — Claudia Hyde, by Frances Courtenay Baylor. (Houghton.) In this story on both sides, the American, which is specifically the Virginian, is much the larger ; it is indeed all that makes the book of consequence. Here Miss Baylor is on her own ground, and she writes freely, affectionately, indeed, of the out-at-elbows Virginian aristocracy. There is much of her playfulness, though less than usual of her wit ; the story is transparent so far as the fortunes of the two chief characters are concerned, but the attractiveness is in the interior, which she paints so confidently. — An American Peeress, by H. C. ChatfieldTaylor (McClurg), is the story of a beautiful American girl who almost loses the love of her English lord, but wins it back again by fighting the devil with fire. This somewhat aged plot serves to connect scenes chiefly from English aristocratic life in town and country. In tone, however, it is quietly but strongly American. Though a bit didactic, it may fairly claim consideration as a piece of artistic work, but so regarded it lacks still the spontaneity which makes art instinct with life. One can praise the author for his studious painstaking. — Esther Waters, by George Moore. (Charles H. Sergei Co., Chicago.) This much-discussed English novel comes out here in a print which adds no charm to the tale. If one wishes to sec how a painstaking artist deals with disagreeable material, and keeps his reader’s attention to the details of an ill-smelling world, here is the opportunity. There certainly is no illusion about the book. — Friends in Exile, by Lloyd Bryce (Cassell), is a series of ill-connected chapters, chiefly about some rather impossible Americans living in Paris. Toward the end, the book degenerates into farce and cheap sensationalism. In the first half, however, it suggests by its occasionally clever style — the style of a disillusioned man of the world — that its author’s real forte lies in the way of short character sketches. — Among the paper-bound reissues of older fiction are : The New Timothy, by William M. Baker (Harpers) ; The Rose of Paradise, by Howard Pyle (Harpers).
Books of and for the Young. Two new volumes have been added to Harper’s Young People Series : The Mystery of Abel Forefinger, by William Drysdale, and The Mate of the Mary Ann, by Sophie Swett. The first is the story, well told and rapid in movement, of the haps and mishaps befalling two hoys during a West Indian and Mexican tour, and, though full of adventure, is, as boys’ books go, noticeably free from exaggeration and over-sensationalism. The mate of the Mary Ann is a girl in her earliest teens, who, like so many very youthful heroines in American tales for the young, has much of the care of a large family upon her slight shoulders. In this case the father is an invalid, the mother a nullity. The main motive of the story is the girl’s sufferings arising from complications and mistakes which a few words in the beginning would have set right. It is told in a readable fashion, but would have been improved by condensation. — The Wee Ones of Japan, by Mae St. John Bramhall. Illustrated by C. S. Weldon. (Harpers.) A little volume devoted to the babies and children of Japan, The pictures are very attractive, and the text also, for the most part. There is a touch of affectation about the writer, but when she is doing her real work of describing scenes and customs she speaks in a natural voice. — Through Thick and Thin, and The Midshipmen’s Mess, a Soldier Story and a Sailor Story, by Molly Elliot Seawell. (D. Lothrop Co.) Is it not as it should be when the soldier story for boys ends with an Indian fight, in which two young friends stand by each other, and the sailor story has in its last chapter a “ Man overboard ! ” and the gallant rescue of the villain by the hero of the tale ? Both stories bear all the marks of having been written for a periodical for the young. — The Boy Travellers in Southern Europe, Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through Italy, Southern France, and Spain, with Visits to Gibraltar and the Islands of Sicily and Malta, by Thomas W. Knox. (Harpers.) The Boy Travellers Series has now attained encyclopædic proportions, the ever-wandering and ever-youthful heroes having reached their fourteenth quarto volume. As before, they see everything which can be illustrated, directly or indirectly, from the inexhaustible store of excellent pictures at their historian’s disposal, they are still conscientiously thorough in the pursuit of information, and they will meet with their usual welcome from a host of young readers.
History and Biography. St. Andrews, by Andrew Lang. Illustrated by T. Hodge. (Longmans.) The author modestly calls this work “a little sketch of the history of St. Andrews,” and disclaims any intention of producing an elaborate and learned chronicle. He suggests that it may help to revivify the past to those visitors to whom the singular fascination of the old city and the interest of its story appeal quite as strongly as the game of golf. In short, it is a sort of expanded and glorified guidebook. Mr. Lang cannot write otherwise than gracefully and entertainingly, and he gives an agreeable vitality even to such facts as are gleaned from dryasdust records ; but the work sometimes shows marks of carelessness or baste, and is hardly complete, even within its self-imposed limitations. The writer has before now indicated his views of Maistor Iohn Knox and his work, which may be briefly characterized as differing more or less widely from those of the vast majority of his countrymen and sympathetic students of their history. But though his manner of treating the great religious contest and also the earlier struggle for independence may jar upon the readers most likely to be attracted by the book, in delineating the leading actors of those turbulent scenes he often shows that he can deal faithfully with friends as well as unfriends. The best of the illustrations add distinctly to the value of the volume. But why should the portrait of Tom Morris have strayed, with comical incongruity, into the tragic climax of The Cardinal’s St. Andrews ? — Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, 1810-1845, edited by her son, the Hon. F. Leveson Gower. (Longmans.) Mr. Charles Greville, in speaking of Earl Granville, declared his most fortunate marriage to have been incomparably the greatest of the many blessings vouchsafed to him; in the whole course of his prosperous career, and the view given of certain traits of the writer’s character in these unstudied and confidential letters serves to confirm the statement. While more liberal omissions from the correspondence would have been wisely made by a less partial editor, the letters are, at their best, exceedingly pleasant reading. By birth a Cavendish, and by marriage a Leveson Gower, Lady Granville was related to or connected with all the ruling Whig families, as they then justly might be called, and her husband was for a long term of years British ambassador at Paris ; so of necessity she knew intimately society, fashionable and political, in France as well as England, during the first half of this century. The cleverness, vivacity, and quick, humorous perception shown in these letters came as a rightful heritage from her mother, the beautiful and brilliant Duchess of Devonshire; and though one of the greatest of great ladies, the writer never ceases to be a warm-hearted and unselfish woman, loyally devoted to her family and friends. — Glimpses of the French Revolution, Myths, Ideals, and Realities, by John G. Alger. (Sampson Low & Co.) Though this book is not so important and original a work as the author’s Englishmen in the French Revolution, the comparison is but a relative one ; for the later volume is not only full of interest and most easily readable, but it also contains so much curious information gathered from the revolutionary byways as to indicate a great deal of intelligent and laborious research on the writer’s part. Even when he follows more or less well-trodden paths, his familiarity with his subject, — a realization of the spirit of the time as well as knowledge of the course of events, — and his special aptness in the selection of illustrative incidents and anecdotes, give a certain freshness to his vivid narrative. The opening chapter contains an excellent résumé of the myths that have been indubitably proven such by many investigators, but the majority of which, we can feel assured, will continue to appear in popular histories quite in the accustomed form. The closing chapters, The Revolutionary Tribunal, Women as Victims, and The Prisons, will give even to careless and superficial readers a lively sense of what life was during the Terror, and may at least partially show why resistance to and attempts to escape from that hideous tyranny were so infrequent ; for what was all France but a larger prison ? — Josiah Gilbert Holland, by Mrs. W. M. Plunkett. (Scribners.) An air of the Memorial hangs about this book, a little to its disadvantage. Dr. Holland was perhaps too successful a man to yield the best subject to a biographer, and yet he was in his way so typical a man of letters, especially as related to American life, that there was an opportunity for a judicious study of character and career. He was a preacher, as Mrs. Plunkett readily shows, but we suspect his preaching told not so much by the force of his ideas as by the touch of art which lifted his work out of the commonplace, though not into the enduring and distinguished. — A True Teacher, Mary Mortimer, a Memoir, by Minerva Brace Norton. (Fleming H. Revell Co., New York.) A detailed narrative of a representative of a class of teachers too apt to be forgotten in these days when women’s colleges are flourishing. Miss Mortimer was penetrated with a sense of the supremacy of religion ; she was also a believer in thoroughness, and she was a pioneer in Western education, long identified closely with the teaching of girls in Milwaukee. Her type is not so common now as it was, but it is devoutly to be hoped that, with greater learning of a specialized sort, the teacher of women who is above all possessed with a genius for forming character may yet be the ideal teacher. — Wah-kee-nah and her People, the Curious Customs, Traditions, and Legends of the North American Indians, by James C. Strong. (Putnams.) The Indian girl who gives this volume its title does not appear until the history and habits of many tribes of Indians, particularly in relation to their women, are described. Then the nominal heroine, having saved the author’s life in the Yakima country, on the Columbia River, is left in happy wedlock with a young chief, while the reader is shown Some of the ways of her immediate people, is hurried away to Florida, and at the end finds himself in Mexico with the natives and Spanish conquistadors. It would be too much to expect equal interest and value in all portions of this much-embracing work, which is distinctly at its best when the writer is dealing with the Indians he has known in the Northwest.
Domestic Economy. The Expert Waitress, a Manual for the Pantry, Kitchen, and Dining - Room, by Anne Frances Springsteed. (Harpers.) This little volume gives admirably clear and precise directions as to the whole duty of a waitress at breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper ; together with instructions in regard to the household work pertaining to the dining-room and pantry ; closing with practical brief homilies on truthfulness, adaptability, and a servant’s contract. The maid who lives up to this excellent handbook will be indeed a treasure. — Domestic Economy ; or, How to Make Hard Times Good and Good Times Better. Designed to Aid in the Successful Management of the Affairs of the Family, the Home, and the Individual. By S. H. Mayer, M. D. (The Author, Lancaster, Pa.) Dr. Mayer is a courageous man. In a volume of less than three hundred pages he essays to give necessary advice relating to economy in general, education. occupation, recreation, accounts, the use of time, fuel, clothing, pets, housekeeping, food, drink, family expenses, care of the constitution, accidents, training of children, exercise, the prevention and cure of disease. It would be hard if some of the advice were not good.