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expectedly into the hands of a scholarly, laborious man who has been for fifteen years trying to make his fortune in the Colonies, and enables him to come home and marry the woman who has been waiting for him. The plot follows the development of the lives so suddenly reunited after so complete a separation, but romance of a different order is brought into it by two young wards who are staying in the house. The relation of a child to adopted parents bas seldom been treated with more sincerity and pathos than in the chapter called "A Bolt from the Blue." The Macmillan Co.

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Many of the stories in Josephine Daskam Bacon's latest volume, "While Caroline Was Growing" have appeared already in the magazines, but they will meet a cordial welcome in their present form. Caroline is a spirited, venturesome child, and her love for the open road leads her to forgather with tramps,, surprise house-breakers and penetrate into private asylums, with results unexpected but interesting. Occasionally Mrs. Bacon uses her to point a moral in a high-handed fashion which she would certainly resent if she realized it, as when in "A Pillar of Society," she discovers in the deserted cabin in the woods the young pair who have run away, unmarried, to make their personal protest against an institution which falls short of their ideals; and is the means of bringing upon the scene a shrewd old woman who convinces them of their unwisdom and fetches a neighboring minister without more ado. But the stories are all readable, and marked by brilliant bits of description and character-drawing. The Macmillan Co.

The heroine of "The Chasm," by George Cram Cook, is a brilliant, beautiful, young Vassar graduate, hurrying home from a Continental tour to

win the consent of her father, a millionaire manufacturer of the Middle West, to her marriage with a Russian count. Before the count can overtake her, her fancy is caught by a young Socialist potting plants in her father's conservatories; they pass a thrilling day storm-bound together on an island where "a dear compulsion weaves its fairy meshes round their souls," and she kisses him, "in the mood of answered prayer." A few chapters on, she marries the count, and the rest of the book is devoted to her growing unhappiness with him, her friendship for a group of revolutionists on his estate, her narrow escape from extreme personal peril, and the re-appearance of "Walt." Solid paragraphs of Socialistic exposition mark the book as an attempt at a propaganda, and in spite of its crudeness it may be destined to form opinions for some of its readers. Frederick A. Stokes Co.

That the vagaries of modern "Yellow Journalism" are not so modern as we are sometimes tempted to think is suggested by some one who quotes the following from Dickens's account of the experiences of Martin Chuzzlewit with New York newspapers: /

Here's this morning's New York Sewer! cried one (newsboy). Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Rowdy Journal!

Here's the New York Here's all the New York papers! Here's the full particulars of the patriotic loco-foco movement yesterday, in which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the political, commercial, and fashionable news. Here they are! Here they are! Here's the papers, here's the papers!

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Mr. Frank Warren Hackett's "Reminiscences of the Geneva Tribunal" (Houghton Mifflin Company) is especially seasonable at a time when the world's attention is being increasingly directed to arbitration as a means of settling international disputes, and the Hague Tribunal stands at once an achievement and a prophecy of sane judicature among the nations. For the Geneva Tribunal did its work of peace long before such a tribunal as that at The Hague had been dreamed of, and it was called upon to settle a dispute of most menacing character between two of the greatest nations. Only those who personally recall the bitterness of the dispute over the Alabama claims, and the keenness of the resentment felt in this country toward England forty years ago, can fully realize all that was meant by the decisions of the Geneva Tribunal and their magnanimous acceptance by the de feated party to the litigation. Probably no one now living is so well qualified as Mr. Hackett to tell this story; for he was Caleb Cushing's secretary at the time, went with him to Geneva, and had intimate personal knowledge of all the negotiations and of all the details of the presentation of the American case. He writes of them fully and with due appreciation of their seriousness, yet not without a lighter touch here and there. The book is an important contribution to the history of one of the most significant and farreaching incidents in American history.

A fascinating little volume that must not be left in the living-room if the members of the household are to get to their work at the proper hours is

"Diminutive Dramas" by Maurice Baring, whose "Dead Letters" will be re membered by many readers with keen pleasure. Appearing first in the "London Morning Post," these delightful satires are now collected in book form, twenty-two in number, of ten or twelve pages each-just the right length to read aloud, and then read another, and then another still, and then one more before we stop. The arrangement is charmingly careless of chronology, and a breakfast-table dispute between Henry VIII. and Catherine Parr, over the color of Alexander-the-Great's horse, is followed by the parting scene between Dido and Eneas, and then by a rehearsal of Macbeth in which Mr. Shakespeare is ordered to introduce into Mr. Burbage's part a soliloquy of thirty lines, if possible in rhyme, in any case ending with a tag. Then comes, with apologies to Mr. Maeterlinck, "The Blue Harlequin," one of the cleverest of all. "Caligula's Picnic," "Lucullus's Dinner-Party," "The Stoic's Daughter" and "Jason and Medea" show the writer's skill in presenting current fads in classic settings, seen to the very best advantage in "After Euripides' 'Electra'," where a supper-party pass judgment on the play in thoroughly upto-date fashion, among them the woman who loves the story and loves Clytemnestra's clothes,-that wonderful, dirty, wine-stained dress-and loves Socrates' little snub nose and adores Mid-Athenian things, so quaint and charming, and has had a wonderful day, and feels as if it had all happened to her. In "Rosamond and Eleanor," modern palmistry is smartly set off, and modern electioneering in "The Member for Literature." But the drollest figure of all is "King Alfred in the Neat-Herd's Hut," repeating "a few little things, mere trifles, composed in the marches during our leisure hours." Houghton & Mifflin

Co.

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III. The Wild Heart. Chapters XIX. and XX. By M. E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell). (To be continued)

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TIMES 210 218

DICKENSIAN

IV. Yorkshire Schools. By E. Hardy
V. A Holiday in South Africa. By the Right Hon. Sir H. Mortimer
Durand, G.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E. (Concluded.)

AZINE

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE 220

VI. An Effect in Light and Shadow. By Norman Innes.

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CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL 231

VII. A Note on the Centenary of Horace Greeley. By A. St. John Adcock

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BOOKMAN

237

PUNCH 240

NATION 242

TIMES 245

SPECTATOR 248

NATION 250 OUTLOOK 253

A PAGE OF VERSE

XIV. The Mother's Prayer. By Dora Sigerson Shorter

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered let ter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

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REFORM OR REVOLUTION?

The first session of the new Parliament was opened on the 6th of February, and meagre as the King's speech might appear to be, its very brevity only brought into stronger relief the one object to which it was practically devoted. If we do not indulge in any conventional expressions of alarm or indignation at the prospect which lies before us, it is not because they would be inadequate, but because they would be superfluous. In the midst of a common calamity or a common peril, men do not indulge in loud lamentations. We must take the first paragraph of the speech as it now stands, with the Parliament Bill in our hands, and consider what it means, if passed into law in its present shape, which we are bound to suppose is what its authors intend. It may turn out that this is not so, and that the Bill may ultimately be more or less modified. But what we have to deal with at the present moment is the precise measure which the speech from the Throne invites us to accept. That is our first concern. On a later page we may consider what the chances are that the Government may be willing to take something less.

We are told in the speech that a measure will be proposed for "settling the relations between the two Houses, and securing the more effective working of the Constitution." But these relations have been settled for centuries; and the Parliament Bill, so far from securing the effective working of the Constitution, entirely ignores the foundation on which it is based. The language used in the speech from the Throne requires us to believe that the British Constitution is not Government by the three estates of the Realm, as it has existed for eight hundred years, but something else which has never

existed at all. The Reform Bill of 1832 was really an amendment of the Constitution, repairing the machinery as we clean the works of a watch, but leaving its springs and wheels untouched. As the removal of any essential organ stops the watch, so the removal of the Veto manifestly stops the Constitution. The Parliament Bill is no amendment. To call it by that name is an absurdity.

Yet the fallacy invoked in this use of the word Constitution will no doubt be played for all it is worth in the coming struggle, in hopes of disguising the real nature of the transaction embodied in the Government Bill. The Government say that they must fix the power of the House of Lords before reconstructing it. The Opposition answer is, "No; we must see the whole scheme at once." In the Reform Bill of 1884 Mr. Gladstone wanted to separate the Extension of the Franchise from the Redistribution of Seats, and to take the former first. "No," said the Opposition; "that would leave the redistribution of seats entirely at your mercy. We must see the whole scheme at once." So now, too, if the Government abolish the Veto before the House of Lords is reconstructed, they can impose any reform they like on the Upper Chamber-or, if they like it better. none at all. They hold out some kind of shadowy suggestion that, at some remote period, the Veto may be restored. Now what does this really mean?

It means this: The Veto is to be suspended-the gate is to be opened for Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, Payment of Members, and a whole string of revolutionary measures to pass through; and when that is done the gate may possibly be closed again. Not that it ever would be. But suppose that it was-it would be

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