I suppose that most people would call that remarkable story his masterpiece; perhaps it is, but I cannot say so with vivid memories of "Far from the Madding Crowd" in my mind. No one in London presided over a more interesting salon than this of Mrs. Moulton's. It was regarded by the literati as an institution, and there was genuine regret when it was given up. Mrs. Moulton, though classed among the literary women of America, was not a writer of the highest rank.

She was an agreeable writer, however, and there are some of her poems that will live in anthologies even if they are not known to the general reader. It is because of her kind and engaging qualities that she will be best remembered by those who were fortunate enough to enjoy her friendship.

Professor Gustav Eberlein, the favorite sculptor of the Emperor William, who visited this country last winter, has been writing us up in the Vossische Zeitung, and what he says is not altogether flattering to our vanity; neither is it altogether true. He remarks upon the various styles of our architecture, also upon the filth of our streets. The streets

of New York are filthy, but not, I think, in the neighborhoods that Professor Eberlein cites:

I cannot help saying here that the filth of the streets is indescribable: not even in front of the majestic mansions of the millionaires is either the street or the sidewalk kept swept. As an enormous number of bulky newspapers circulate daily in New York, and these are carelessly thrown away when read, the streets are full of dirty crumpled paper. That alone is a horrible sight.

The Emperor's favorite sculptor goes on to remark that our art is as cosmopolitan as our architecture. He seems rather unhappy over here until he meets Sir C. Purdon Clarke. This gentleman "does not as yet appear to be infected with modernism, but to oppose it frankly and openly." Modernism is a terrible word to Professor Eberlein. He is as conservative in matters pertaining to art as the Emperor himself. The sculpture in Central Park he pronounces "appalling," and here I am at one with our critic. But I am dead against him when he proposes building “a monumental gateway, a triumphal arch, dedicated to the great men of America," at the entrance to the Park. Why add to the "appalling" monuments already there? It will perhaps be remembered that Professor Eberlein came to this country to look over the ground with a view to opening an exhibition of German sculpture in New York. On thinking the matter over he has come to the conclusion that the time is not ripe for such an exhibition. In this he is wise.

2

So Mr. Richard Harding Davis is a deputy sheriff. He will find it a very convenient thing to live, as he does, on a farm that is so near the outskirts of a big city as "Four Corners." To be a successful sheriff one must be a Sherlock Holmes, for the masked burglar of the suburbs is a difficult one to catch. In broad daylight four men held up Mr. Arthur Scribner's contractor and robbed him of $500 on the much-travelled Bedford road. Then they disappeared, and so did the money. If Mr. Davis, badge on breast, had only come along at the psychological moment, the highwaymen might now be reflecting on their sins behind iron bars, instead of spending their ill-gotten gains in front of gilded ones.

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It is not often that I find a novel so absorbing that I cannot lay it down until I have finished it. In "The

Circular Staircase," I found my Waterloo. It held me fast. There was no getting away from it. I had other things to do, but they were given the go-by until I had unravelled. the plot of that thrilling tale. It is a detective story with the mystery beginning in the first chapter and giving no hint of the dénouement until the very last. Unlike most detective stories it is humorous. The humor is not hilarious, but of a gentle, percolating quality that keeps the reader quietly "chortling in his joy." The Sherlock Holmes of this tale is a lady a maiden lady of ripe years, whom to know is to dote upon. She is the most real character that I have. encountered in any story for years. If she ever gets to the stage, she should be played by Fanny Brough.

2

The writer of this story is Mary Roberts Rinehart, and this is her first book. I have seen this lady's name signed to short stories in the magazines, and made up my mind. some time ago that she would be heard from outside of magazine pages before very long. It is, I believe, only four years since she published her first story. Mrs. Rinehart is just out of her twenties and is the mother of three boys. Her first intention. was to study medicine and to that end she took a preliminary course in a hospital training-school. "There,"

she wrote to a friend: "I decided to study medicine at second-hand, and three days after graduation I married. a surgeon on the hospital staff."

Besides stories, Mrs. Rinehart has written plays; but, like many a playwright before her, she has not been made particularly happy by their performance. I hope, however, that she will not be discouraged, for she has the qualities of the playwright. In the meantime, let us have another story with Miss Rachel Innes as one of its leading characters.

If Mr. Frank Doubleday were not an inveterate golf-player he would have missed some great opportunities in the course of his life. It was on the golf-links of St. Andrew's our own Westchester County St. Andrew'sthat he played the game with Mr. Carnegie and formed warm friendly and business relations with the famous iron-master, whose publisher he became. It was on the golf-links of a famous winter resort in Georgia that he knocked the balls with Mr. Rockefeller. In the little confidential talks after the game, that much be-written gentleman so interested the publisher in the story of his life that he persuaded him to write it out, that the world might know him as he knew himself. The result the readers of the World's Work already know. So you see what the leisurely game of golf has done for the hustling Mr. Doubleday.

28

I

As a matter of fact, an editor or a publisher picks up as many good things accidentally as he does by design. On shipboard, at the club, on the golf-links, he meets some one who lets a word drop that brings down as much fruit as the tree that is deliberately shaken. As a publisher's adviser, some years ago, I got upon the track of some of the most successful books almost by accident. One day I met a friend in the street who asked me if I could throw any translating in her way. suggested Marie Bashkirtseff's “Journal," and sent her a copy of the French edition. The world knows what followed. A dinner-party that I came very near not going to, resulted in Max O'Rell's "Jonathan and his Continent"; and so on down the line. The more one stirs about, the more ideas one picks up. The oldtime publisher let things come to him; the publisher of to-day moves about among men and women too, for some of his best successes come from his women authors.