Hugo, or any other of the world's lovers.
Marna Trent was keen, witty, clever. She
has written some eternal, stinging, yet whole-
some truths about life. Shall we jeer her
because in spite of her extraordinary clever-
ness she could cry just like an ordinary
woman? She cried a great deal perhaps, be-
cause life hurt her horribly, but it is not
probable that she cried harder than does many
a woman of her type who is unfortunate
enough to marry her first love. First love is
a fine madness, but sometimes pitiful, and at
its worst pitiless for such women as Mama
Trent.
In "The Confessions of a Wife" you may
read the naked story of a woman's soul.
Whether you will like it depends on your own
temperament. But like it or dislike it the fact
remains that in this much disputed book is the
wonderful story of a woman who came un-
scathed through a woman's worst dangers,
raised up pure affection out of ruined rapture,
and crowned a repentant husband with such
tender loving-kindness that the poor dullard
thought he was a king again. Who ever may
be the mysterious author hiding her vivid
personality under the pseudonym of "Mary
Adams," she is to be congratulated on the
power that has made these "Confessions" so
significantly worthy of discussion. (Century.
$1.50.) Boston Literary World.
Memories of a Hundred Years.
A SERIES of fourteen articles which re-
cently appeared in the Outlook magazine
have been revised and reprinted in two vol-
umes bearing the collective title "Memories
of a Hundred Years," by Edward Everett
Hale. These articles embody not only the
author's personal reminiscences, which them-
selves date back more than seventy years
he is now in his eighty-first year but also a
great deal of interesting historical data which
have come down to him from his forefathers.
He has at his command, he tells us, in-
numerable diaries and correspondence that
throw light on the ideas, the doings and the
customs, not only of his own generation, but
of the generations to which his parents and
grandparents belonged. Dr. Hale's father
loved to study history in the original docu-
ments, and was at much pains to secure them.
Thus it has come to pass that his son has
inherited a mass of valuable material relat-
ing to the history of the United States in the
latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier
part of the nineteenth century that it would
prove difficult to match in any other private
library, much of which is lacking in some
large public collections of books and papers.
For the recollections of a century and
that a century so crowded with important
January, 1903 J
THE LITERARY NEWS.
events as the nineteenth there is but scant
room, even in two volumes comprising some
six hundred pages. We must not quarrel
with the eclectic process applied by the au-
thor to the copious and diverse materials at
his disposal; it is probable that no two men
would adopt the same principles of selection.
Dr. Hale seems to have chosen for discus-
sion the topics in which he is personally most
interested, and he recognizes that some of
The Intrusions of Peggy.
The reader of "The Intrusions of Peggy"
might be excused if he wondered, half way
through the book, why it did not bear another
title. For a long time we are asked to inter-
est ourselves almost exclusively in the per-
sonality and affairs of Mrs. Trix Trevella, a
beautiful young widow, in whose nature con-
flicting qualities are constantly at work. She
has suffered a good deal by the time the story
From *'The Intrusions of Peggy.
Copyright . 1901, by Anthony Hope Hawkins. (Harper & Bros.)
'times are hard, but the heart is light, airey."
his readers may regret the exclusion of cer-
tain subjects.
It will be recognized by even the most
cursory inspector of these volumes that they
differ essentially from much of the reminis-
cent literature for which we are indebted to
men of advanced years. Far from being gar-
rulous, the author gives continual proofs of
self-restraint and leaves us wishing that he
would tell us more. The anecdotes have
been, as a rule, carefully verified ; where
they are based on hearsay the fact is noted.
The reflections are those of an acute and
original observer. The whole book abounds
in evidences of the author's penetration. We
gladly acknowledge the debt under which
Dr. Hale has placed us, and we have no
doubt that a multitude of readers will con-
cur in the acknowledgment. (Macmillan.
2 v.. net, $5.) M. W. H., in N. Y. Sun.
opens, having passed through a not very
cheerful girlhood, followed by some bitter
years with a husband who was at his kindest
only when he took himself off to another
world. There is much good in Trix, but there
is an unholy fondness in her for the glitter of
fashionable life. She seeks compensation for
her early woes in an existence altogether
worldly. Things go wrong. She means to
make the world her football, and, naturally,
discovers that this is not the safest amuse-
ment in which one can ordinarily indulge.
Her triumphs and her troubles interest us to
such an extent that we are ready to forgive
Anthony Hope his title, even while it puzzles
us, but presently Peggy Ryle appears in her
true light, as the source of what is to be most
charming in the story, and then we not only
understand the title, but are most emphati-
cally with the author in his choice of it.
THE LITERARY NEWS.
[January, 1903
Courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
Peggy is adorable. She is more than that.
If she is fair to look upon, she is also good to
know, as one character in the book after an-
other finds out. A little princess, presiding
over a small circle of Bohemians in London,
she diffuses joy with a naturalness that keeps
even her literary and artistic chums from
taking their own affectations seriously; she
leavens the lump, and, for once, we make the
acquaintance in a novel of Bohemians who are
rot bores. Peggy's influence appears in most
of the developments of the story, and always
in a way to make them more interesting. She
and her companions are constantly saying
bright things. When they are silent, Anthony
Hope is saying them. It is a bright book, in
short, with an undercurrent of beguiling seri-
ousness. (Harper. $1.50.) iV. V. Tribune.
A Sea Turn, and Other Matters.
There is a uniform excellence about the
six stories gathered together in Mr. Aldrich's
latest volume which is very comforting to the
hardened reader of contemporary fiction. In
the first place, each of these compositions has
?. definite character of its own, a motive dif-
fering altogether from that in each one of
the others. In every case the author gives
his work finish. Moreover, while Mr. Al-
drich discloses so clearly the conscience and
the skill of a literary artist, he manages to
retain, throughout his work, an atmosphere
of nature, of unforced comedy or tragedy.
In this book we have fiction of the old-
fashioned sort, mature and thorough, well
balanced, and rich in the qualities of an indi-
vidual mind. The touch is always light, even
where the theme is grave, light in the sense
that it places the author's conception before
the reader with perfect ease and never with
obscurity or exaggeration. The opening tale
treats of a little incident that causes a slight
ripple in the happiness of a young man and
his wife. It is full of fun ; but where an or-
dinary writer might easily have drifted into a
vein of something like farce in the celebration
ot this incident, Mr. Aldrich is faithful to a
more dignified note, and amuses us with a
certain delicacy, as' a man of exquisite talk
might amuse us. "His Grace the Duke" pro-
vides a kind of meditative interlude between
this pretty tale and "Shaw's Folly," a de-
lightfully suggestive narrative of a philan-
thropist's difficulties. The scene of "An Un-
told Story" brings in the exotic note for
which Mr. Aldrich has always had a pre-
dilection. It i barely more than a fragment,
but within its narrow limits it is flawless.
In "The Case of Thomas Phipps" some New
England types are handled with capital hu-
mor, and "The White Feather," a story of the
Civil War, brings the volume to an end with
a really impressive stroke of drama. Never
has Mr. Aldrich done better work than in
this volume. It is interesting from beginning
to end, and it has, for all that the stories in
it illustrate no very exalted ambition, a savor
of distinction. (Houghton, Mifflin. $1.25.)
xY Y. Tribune.
Courtesy of ThAlacmillan Co.
JACOB RIIS.
January, 1903]
THE LITERARY NEWS.
The Battle with the Slum.
Here is a book that every one should read
those who are interested in their fellow-
men who are poorer than themselves, be-
cause they will find in Mr. Riis's book a suc-
cinct account of the condition of the New
York tenement districts of to-day ; those who
are not interested in their fellow-men, that
their interest may be quick-
ened. It is more than ten
years since the publication of
"How the Other Half Lives."
We have taken a step forward
since then. The people in this
and in other great cities, whose
duty it is to care how that other
half lives, and to see to it that
their lives may be made endur-
able, are one by one awakening
from an apathy which permitted
corrupt city governments to
evade the laws made for the
protection of its poor.
It is not for partisan purposes
that thi%book was written. Mr.
Riis is merely telling a story
of a fight with the slums of
New York which extends over
more than a quarter of a cen-
tury. He has pointed out when
an advantage was gained,
when, for instance, better build-
ing laws were passed and en-
forced, when old rookeries like
the Mulberry Bend tenements
gave place to a park, when the
schools had to furnish play-
grounds for its children ; and
he has mentioned at the same
time what the forces were which
opposed and checked these
needed reforms, and ih almost From"T
all cases the opposition hap-
pened to be Tammany.
It is a book which is well fitted to rouse
from their apathy those people who believe
in a "reform" government for this city but
nol ardently enough to go out and cast a vote
on a rainy election morning. "The Battle
with the Slum" is the story of a long, dis-
heartening fight, and a fight which is not yet
over. It needed an optimist to write the
book in the cheerful spirit in which Mr. Riis
has written it. It needed an optimist to fight
the battle. It is throughout a sane story of
n.en who have used common sense in their
attempts to better the condition of this city,
of men who are not busy in the task of try-
ing to reform away human nature. At the
same time it is more dramatic than any book
of fiction, for it deals with the life and death
of thousands of the dwellers in New York.
Some years ago Mr. Riis published "A Ten
Years' War" ; this present volume is a prac-
tical rewriting of the former text, with a
third more material added. (Macmillan.
$2 net ) Literary Digest.
le Splendid Idle Forties " Copyright, 1902, by The Macmillan Co.
'it was only the pearls you wanted."
The Splendid Idle Forties.
In these stories Mrs. Atherton has for-
saken her idealization of Alexander Hamil-
ton, and has performed a similar feat for the
Mexicans of California in the forties. It is
an attractive picture that she draws of the
idle, sumptuous life of the lords of the Pa-
cific coast in the days before the "Gringoes"
came. The girls are all graceful and charm-
ing and the caballeros are dashing and hand-
some and, with the exception of a few of the
young ladies, one and all unite in hating the
American invaders from the bottoms of their
hearts. (Macmillan. $1.50.) Public Opin-
ion.
THE LITERARY NEWS.
[January, 1903
The Millionairess.
His many years of globe-trotting, and his
long sojourn in England, with excursions to
the continent, gave Mr. Ralph an entirely
new and very comprehensive viewpoint when
he returned to us and began to settle down
again in our ways of living and doing things.
He found much that had' been changed since
The "smart'' set, as distinguished from our
real best society, the frothy fringe which sur-
rounds it and clings to it, is the main object
of his attack. His millionairess is young and
unsophisticated, utterly unversed in the ways
of the world to which her wealth commits her,
and to which she wishes to belong. We have
also the other side of the social picture,
-^T
From The MUliouairess." Copyri .ht, 1902, by Lothrop Publishing Co.
SHE SAT SWINGING HER FEET AND LOOKING DOWN ON MR. STONE.
his departure, and much that, in the light of
his cosmopolitan experience, was not alto-
gether in the right direction of development.
Much of Mr. Ralph's observations, his
sense of change that has not been altogether
progress, his judgment of social tendencies,
in the larger sense as well as in the narrower
one which applies the adjective to a certain
class of our people, is embodied in this story
of present-day life in New York and its
fashionable country seats ; indeed, the tale is
based upon the observations, and serves as
their vehicle. In this sense it is a "purpose"
novel, though its mission does not rest heav-
ily upon its plot.
notably a sketch of that true Bohemian circle
which is found here as in every great Euro-
pean city, composed of cultured men of
achievement and women who are their peers
as well as mates a sketch touched freely
with the aspiring fantasy of the recollection
of many such groups in other countries, but
at bottom strictly local, and recognizable in
a measure by all who know.
Perhaps Mr. Ralph has endeavored to
crowd too much into the record of one epi-
sode in his heroine's life. Still, after the
book is closed, one hardly realizes this ; it cer-
tainly proves no drawback in the reading.
(Lothrop. $1.50.) A^. y. Mail and Express.
January, 1903]
THE LITERARY NEWS.
/
Paul Kelver.
It has long been known that Mr. Jerome,
having won popularity as a humorist, aspires
to the fame of a serious novelist. This book
promises to bring him, at least in some meas-
ure, the fulfilment of his desire, for it is un-
questionably readable, undoubtedly a serious
novel of everyday life, leavened with humor,
and apparently the beginning of a promising
new departure in his career. And, in the
course of time he, too, may come to aspire to
a knighthood and a seat in Parliament.
This story of Paul Kelver's childhood and
early manhood is, we are given to under-
stand, to a certain extent autobiographical ;
but where the biography ends and fiction be-
gins it is impossible to decide, nor is it ma-
terial to do so. Paul, be it confessed, is but
an average young man, quite willing to yield
the centre of the stage to others in the tell-
ing of his story; there are several characters
coming into and dropping out of the record of
his early years that, for all the transitoriness
of their appearance, make one wish to know
more of them, a wish Paul himself hardl>
inspires on the turning of the
closing page, even though his
manhood's career is then but just
beginning. In short, while there
are neither high flights nor deep
soundings in these pages, there is
entertainment in each and every
one of them, and pathos, too. The
book is soundly planned, its frame-
work is well put together, the lines
of the building are free from mon-
otony, and if, in the end, it proves
to be neither a temple of the Muses
nor the palace of a conqueror, but,
instead, an unpretentious dwelling
house, the reader will not grum-
ble, for he is comfortable there in
the company of his host and his
companions ; he realizes that ^hey
succeed in entertaining him thor-
oughly.
The book is good enough to
stand on its own merits, and on
them it may be recommended for
the tranquil entertainment it af-
fords, the soundness of its studies
of human nature. It is not a great
book, but a satisfactory one, and
one indicating that Mr. Jerome's
new departure is likely to bear
sound fruit. (Dodd, Mead & Co.
$1.50.) .v. Y. Mail and Express.
The Romance of the Colorado River,
With natural features which ought to make
it one of the wonders of the world, it is
strange how little is known about the Colo-
rado River, even in this country, whose in-
habitants should take a particular interest in
it. A giant torrent, which for more than 1000
miles of its course runs at the bottom of a
stupendous canon, is no mean curiosity. Dis-
covered by Alargon in 1540, it defied for cen-
turies a full exploration, and even to-day in
some of its parts is a source of mystery and
speculation. Its romance as well as its his-
tory have now been written by Frederick S.
Dellenbaugh. Mr. Dellenbaugh was a mem-
ber of the United States Colorado River Ex-
pedition of 1871-2, which for the first time
gave to the world a detailed account of the
unknown river. The volume is illustrated by
photographs taken on the expedition, by new
maps, and by drawings inade by the author
and by others (Putnam. $3.50 net.) N. Y.
Times Saturday Review.
Romance of the,Culor.ido River." Copyright, 190i, by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
A CANYON OF THE COLORADO.
THE LITER ARY NEWS.
[January, 1903
Memoirs of Paul Kruger.
Mr. Kruger has "sat" to himself and his
intrinsic value appears, perhaps, for the first
time to an assembled company of English
Gentiles.
"Oom Paul" is an epithet showing that Mr.
Kruger was at least the uncle of his electors.
He represented (approximately) the Boer
ideal of a Chosen Person appointed to govern
a Chosen People. Born an Afrikander more
than ten years before the Great Trek (viz., in
1825), he learned the dreadful sweetness of
property held in insecurity, and of civilization
on the borders of a wilderness where a man
might chance to be skinned alive. Cowherd,
hunter, warrior, statesman, a burly Ulysses
conferring alone with angry Kaffir cannibals-
in their mountain caves, crossing the ocean to
parley with the wisest and soapiest of English-
men and Europeans, this Boer, disdainful of
pocket-handkerchiefs, with the long, broad
nose and fringed chin and the thumbless left
hand, was more than Admirable Crichton to
his fellow republicans. Twice he married into
a family (the du Plessis) "closely connected
with that to which Cardinal Richelieu be-
longed," but the vigilant republican in him
never basked slumbrously in the secular past,
however gilded. His past was an Old Testa-
ment one ; all of him that was not Boer was
Dopper or "Canting Church." He was a
patriot in the deep inner meaning of the word.
The foreigner was to him as the Amorite to
the Israelite. As a patriot he was marvel-
lously patient and single-minded. The rev-
erence for law which made him as a young
man submit to be thrashed after a rhinoceros
hunt because he had agreed to be thrashed if
he was reckless, grew in him.
We do not think that fifty years hence
these words of the exile at Utrecht will be
read by Englishmen without emotion. At that
date there will only be remembered the pathos
of a pastoral state ruined by apoplectic pa-
triotism and Jacobean Christianity. At that
date Kruger will be remembered not as the
vilifier of Rhodes and the traducer of Mr.
Chamberlain, not as the cruel stepfather of
the Uitlanders, but as the patriot who at the
age of three score and ten, in his fourth
Presidentship, worked from eight to twelve
of the morning, from two to four or five of
the afternoon, and who rose twice in the
night, to encourage and advise a doomed army
too weak to hold what it had captured, or to
carry by assault a foe enfeebled by privations.
The pathos of his own position needs no
enforcement. His wife died while he was a
fugitive among pleasant opportunists. Huz-
zas in lieu of bread are in the end a more
painful substitute than stones. Huzzas the
Continent have given him in millions. He
has also the bitterness of knowing that he has
both made and unmade the Republic that
trusted him as the Jews their prophets. (Cen-
tury. $3.50 net.) Academy and Literature.
Just So Stories for Little Children.
"Just So Stories for Little Children" is
nothing less than a little masterpiece of its
kind. If is as much of a work of genius, in
its way, as "The Man Who Was," or any
other of the author's more ambitious per-
formances. To begin with, Mr. Kipling starts
with an idea calculated to fascinate a child at
once. How did the things happen that are
presented to the wondering gaze of little boys
and girls when they look out upon the nat-
ural world ? How did the whale get his big
throat, the camel his monstrous hump, the
rhinoceros his wrinkled skin, the elephant his
trunk? Mr. Kipling makes the best of all
appeals to childhood when he appeals to its
instinct of " 'satiable curtiosity," and he pro-
ceeds to satisfy it after a fashion incompara-
ble for freshness and charm. Invention runs
riot in this book, but it is controlled by con-
summate art. The child who refuses to be-
lieve the things he reads in it is no true child,
but a sad little changeling for whom it is use-
less to try to do anything.
The style of the book is as quaint as are
its incidents. Where another writer, talking
about the beginning of thmgs, would mention
the "first" elephant or the "original" turtle,
Mr. Kipling talks about the "High and Far
Oflf Times" in which "the Eldest Magician
was getting things ready," and tells how he
gave all the animals permission to come out
and play.
Not content with reciting his wonderful
narratives in this entrancing manner, Mr.
Kipling" adds inimitable verses to them, and
illustrates them with drawings of his own,
that, if not technically perfect, have some
artistic quality, and, what is more to the point,
possess an originality and a quaintness which
should take the nursery by storm. Each pic-
ture, too, is faced by a description which is by
itself a triumph. Never was there a book for
children to surpass this. It takes its place
beside Lewis Carroll's "Alice," with Ten-
niel's illustrations, as a classic which genera-
tion after generation of children will prize as
a source of flawless joy. (Doubleday, Page.
$1.20 net.) A^. Y. Tribune.
January, 1903
THE LITERARY NEWS.
Frank Norris.
Brilliant achievement and measureless
possibility were cut short by the recent sud-
den death of Frank Norris. Although but
thirty-two years old, Norris stood at the
head of the group of young American writers
who have found in present day national con-
amid the surging agricultural struggle de-
picted in "The Octopus." During 1896-97,
while he was editor of the San Francisco
Wave, he wrote his first novel, "McTeague,"
followed quickly by "Moran of the Lady
Letty." Later foreign travel and the Cuban War
contributed their formative influences, added
Courtesy of Doubleiiay, Pr.ge & Co.
FRANK NORRIS.
ditions, political, industrial and social, a limit-
less field for the exercise of their powers.
Norris was essentially American in his out-
look upon life, but his was the prophet's
eye that could see to what end the gigantic
forces of our industrial and financial life are
tending.
The circumstances of his life gave ample
preparation for his future work, since he
was born in Chicago and lived there during
his first fifteen impressionable years ; then
was taken to California, where he grew up
to by his experience as "reader" in a Nev/
York publishing house. Meanwhile he had
written "Blix" and "A Man's Woman;" but
not until the publication of "The Octopus,"
in 1901, did Norris fully find himself. This
novel was the first of a trilogy conceived
on broad, Zolaesque Imes, designed to portray
the story of the wheat from its sowing in
California to its distribution in the Chicago
wheat markets and its final consumption in
Europe. Despite many inequalities of style and
some false notes in characterization. "The
lO
THE LITERARY NEWS.
{January, 1903
Octopus" is a powerful picture of life in the Thoroughbreds.
California wheat farms held fast in the tyranny W. A. Fraser, the author of "Mooswa,"
of the railroad companies. "The Pit," the sec- "The Outcasts," etc., has now given us a
ond volume of the trilogy, is promised by book entitled "Thoroughbreds," which will.
Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. at an early
date, and will carry the story of the wheat
into the Chicago wheat pit.
It was Norris's plan, cut short by death, to
follow the progress of wheat distribution by
taking passage in a wheat shio bound for