what counteracting tendency is there? The Union does its distant best; we cling to a farcical rush as stimulating class spirit; we have theatre-parties and smokers. And still we disintegrate. We know the men of our own clique in other classes better than the men of another in our own. The efforts at union are sporadic: the tendency to separate constant. We put Freshman and Senior side by side in our lectures; and wonder why we don't have class spirit. It is true that in a big course one is about as chummy with his neighbor as men in a city street car; but even in a street car they grow chummy if they are going to the same base-ball game. "Community of interest" is a vague term; but until it exists there is little use in trying to keep people mutually interested. Enduring a set of lectures together may not be the strongest bond of fellowship for a class; but it at least gives a social unit from which to start.

With our present elaborate system one can suggest a change only with bated breath. But the way that system is used convinces one that it is not doing its work efficiently. College men may be able to choose good courses; but they don't. An iron-clad curriculum is not the only alternative. For the first two years there might be some-say half-compulsory courses; and in them good old-fashioned recitations might be allowed. This may not be advanced in theory, but it is a system that has worked in practice. We are not apt to learn to work in lectures, or miscellaneous elementary courses. A few compulsory, hard courses might not be a bad experiment.

Book Notices.

CHERRY. By Booth Tarkington. New York: Harper and Brothers.

In Cherry, Mr. Tarkington has done well enough to make it surprising that he did not do a great deal better. His situation-it can scarcely be called a plot is exceedingly clever, and his characters are ingeniously conceived. On this foundation he might have written a brilliant story; he has only succeeded in producing a readable one. The grace and charm of Monsieur Beaucaire are largely wanting, and their place is supplied by a rather forced humor. Here and there one comes upon real wit; but, for the most part, the humor is dragged in with obvious effort. The structure is unaccountably careless, as if the book had been dashed off without time for revision of any kind. On the other hand, it is entertaining throughout; and has the distinct merit of growing steadily better as the action progresses. Mr. Sudgeberry, who "was admitted to possess a something, thoughtful and philosophic, a leaning toward theologic earnestness, added to a contempt for the gayeties of the world" at the age of nineteen, is at all times amusing; but the carelessness that injures the entire book damages the effect of many of his best speeches, by rendering them quite impossible. The other characters are too conventional to be of much importance. They, in common with the entire book, are marred by the lack of that charm that made Monsieur Beaucaire one of the most delightful of recent American stories, and without which Mr. Tarkington's style is scarcely good enough to "carry" a book whose sole claim upon the reader is the manner in which it tells an extremely slight story.

H. A. B.

COLONEL CARTER'S CHRISTMAS. By F. Hopkinson Smith. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons.

There are those that lament the fact announced in gloomy library reports that two-thirds of our countrymen read nothing but novels. Whether

they don't do literature less harm by reading only novels is a question interesting but not important. There is little use in belaboring the ignorant masses with lectures on the evil of frivolous reading; they do not want to read Huxley and they will not; and one can't be sensible about it and indignant at the same time. The people never had books so easily at their command before; the library fever is a new one. But it is very probable that the vast majority have always sought amusement, not instruction, and it is no sign of degeneration if they prefer the comic opera and the novel to the problem play and the philosophical essay. The best that can be done is to give them good novels. (Pardon the lofty attitude, but, of course, the "critic" is privileged to direct such matters). They probably won't appreciate it, but they ought to. This is what a few men like Mr. Smith, Thomas Nelson Page, Gilbert Parker and some others, are doing. The novel is not the fad of today; it is the form of literature that takes hold on the ordinary mind of today, and no amount of dignified protest from the enlightened few, the literary aristocracy, will change it. Probably no one will ever revere Tom Grogan and The Master Diver in a century as Pamela is revered and unread now; but if they amuse their many now, and make a few people lighthearted, possibly even a little unselfish, they are doing something quite worth while. That is what Mr. Smith does in Colonel Carter's Christmas. It points out no weak spots in the social fabric of this century; it finds no fault, is in fact quite a frivolous bit of work; yet it is mighty good reading, one leaves it with, mentally, a very clean taste in the mouth, and one is grateful for a very pleasant hour or two of living in fancy-life without a thought of tomorrow to keep us from enjoying today. The Colonel is not at all an exemplary person; he does not keep accounts, he has no "head" for business, he drinks a good deal, and has an absurd feeling of pride in it all. That is not an ideal of the day. If any boy said he would like to be that sort of a person his elders would shake their heads and gravely tell his father that that boy ought never to have gone to college-he ought to be put to work, sir. But the Colonel is a very delicious person; you wouldn't have him

changed in a single particular. He gives one a sort of comfortable feeling that things will come out well in the end; and that, if not particularly stimulating or ethical, is very pleasant about Christmas, or any other time. The "masses" may be left alone with such a book in complete safety.

L. B.

"A BUNCH OF ROSES and other Parlor Plays." By M. E. M. Davis. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company.

Two of Mrs. Davis's six plays are interesting enough to make them disappointing. These two, His Lordship and The New System, are cleverly conceived and on the whole amusing, yet they are swathed in useless stage conventions. In His Lordship the conventional mistaken identity is used effectively. The house party at Sea View Villa mistake two servants, one for an English lord, the other for a French countess. Mrs. Davis handles piquantly the adventures of these two, but unfortunately she introduces two newspaper reporters in order that when the curtain falls, every girl in the cast may be provided with a man to hold her hand.

The New System employs successfully the state of society first exploited by Mr. Gilbert in Trial by Jury. The abhorrence of men for women's work and the inability of women to do men's work under The New System are entertainingly shown. If Mrs. Davis had been content with her exposition. and given her audience credit for sufficient imagination to supply an inevitable conclusion, the play would not have ended as it now does by a sudden impossible return to the Old System.

In the other four plays such devices as the use of roses in the play that gives its name to the collection, and the introduction of the Bashaw of Bharhawalla into A Dress Rehearsal atone for the subordination of many of Mrs. Davis's ideas to what she imagines the stage demands.

G. E. F.

THE FOREST. By Stewart Edward White. New York: The Outlook Company.

Some people spend a deal of valuable time in wondering what the future form of literature may be-will it be the problem-play, the short poem, the novel, the short story, the essay? And probably some one of their theories as to the form is right. But what of its spirit? Are we going to carry out the Pre-Raphaelites' "artisticality," or will it be "realism" or "symbolism" or some more remote mania? It is all very profitless; but if there is any one thing that will determine the value of that future literature is the men that write it. The man's the thing. You may swear yourselves to vows of keeping only the chaste artistic forms, you may have all the theories you choose; but you must have a man behind it.

All this is not to prove that Mr. White's books are the pattern on which future literature will be modelled. It is merely to emphasize the relative value of the artistic form and the stuff that is put into the form. In "literary circles" it is the form that counts; let a thing be "artistic" and it will be welcome. But it may be doubted whether literary circles are going to decide the value of contemporary literature. The literary circle would find little to praise in The Forest. But it is a pretty good book for all that. It has no form, it has no significance, it is utterly un-literary; but it is very pleasant to read. And this is all because the man behind it is a "nice fellow." I know nothing about Mr. White except what I have seen in two of his books; I have thought them most pleasantly remote from literature, I am sure that the love-story of The Blazed Trail is, plainly, tommy-rot; and yet I am convinced that he is a "nice fellow." For the essays in this book make you think him a real man; they give one a certain feeling of real stuff in the way of character, without any hint of affectation, and they have withal a very saving grace of humor. The Forest may not be literature; but one may be forgiven for liking it better than all the "artistic" literature produced by Mr. White's contemporaries.

L. B.

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