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CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS

farce. These were designed for cheap theatres and were successful, notably the Steve Brodie melodrama, "On the Bowery. "An Enemy to the King," a more ambitious play, was produced by E. H. Sothern in September, 1895, running the entire winter. "The Ragged Regiment" was produced at the Herald Square Theatre in New York in June, 1898. The theme treated was the Cuban revolution.

At the suggestion of Messrs. L. C. Page & Company, the Boston publishers, he wrote a novel based on the play, "An Enemy to the King." This was brought out in book form in 1897 and is now in its thirtieth thousand.

His new novel, "Philip Winwood," dealing with the adventures of an American officer during the war of the revolution, has the remarkable record of having sold thirty thousand copies before publication.

Mr. Stephens was married in 1889.

Mr. and Mrs. Stephens went abroad last spring and are traveling leisurely through England and the Continent.

Robert Loveman, whose second book of verse has just been issued by the J. B. Lippincott Co., lives in the quaint little Southern city of Dalton, Ga. Mr. Loveman devotes himself to his books, and his chosen calling of literature. He is fond of travel, and specially likes London, where he spent a recent summer browsing in the British Museum. An extended journey through France, Switzerland and Germany, resulted in some poems of travel, now appearing in the magazines. His winters are usually spent in New York with Mr. Will N. Harben, who is wellknown as the author of many remarkably good southern stories. Mr. Zangwill, in reviewing Mr. Loveman's previous volume, says of the verses, "They are marked by delicacy of expression, restraint of handling, and tenderness of thought."

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Mr. Elmore Peake, whose first novel will be issued this fall from the press of McClure, Phillips & Co., is a young man, twenty-nine years of age, and the son of a Methodist minister. His home is in Beloit, Wis., and it is the several characteristically American phases of modern life found in this section of the country which he has successfully depicted. Mr. Peake became private secretary to Congressman M. H. McCord when he was eighteen years old. He held this position three years, changing from it to several clerkships. After a year's experience as corresponding secretary of a sash and door manufacturing concern, he decided to try his hand at writing. This was four years ago. Mr. Peake found his vocation. His stories were an instant success, and the clerkships were put away with a resolve on the writer's part never to be renewed. Mr. Peake is now devoting himself solely to literature. One of his most successful

MISS GERTRUDE HALL

[From a photograph by Hollinger]

stories is "The Moonshiners," a Georgian tale, which appeared in the Christmas issue of Pearson's Magazine. He is a sincere, quiet-minded man, who looks at life in an optimistic way, and writes about things and people exactly as he sees them.

Miss Gertrude Hall has written a romance entitled "April's Sowing," which will be among the fall publications. The title is quoted from a stanza in "Pippa Passes":

"You'll love me yet!-and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing;
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April's sowing."

Miss Hall's name has become identified in literature with work which is essentially artistic. She was educated in Florence, Italy, and has written several volumes of short stories and poems, beside translating Paul Verlaine's poems and

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The author of "The Girl at the Half

way House," Mr. E. Hough, gained general recognition by his remarkable book, "The Story of the Cowboy," published by D. Appleton & Company, in this country, and also published in England.

"The Girl at the Halfway House" illustrates the strange life of the great westward movement which became so marked in this country after the civil war. While the story is a novel with a love motive, it is, perhaps, most striking as a romance of the picturesque and dramatic. days of early Western life. It shows the movement westward, and the free play of primitive forces in the opening of a new country. Nothing has been written on the opening of the West to excel this ro

mance in epic quality, and its historic interest, as well as its freshness, vividness, and absorbing interest, should appeal to every American reader.

The portrait of Mr. Charles Frederic Goss, the author of "The Redemption of David Corson " which Miss Laughlin reviewed in our last issue, is printed through the courtesy of Mr. Goss's publishers the Bowen-Merrill Co.

Mr. Hervey White, the author of "Differences," was born in New London, Iowa, in the year 1866, the son of farming people. Owing to the death of the mother of the family, which occurred when Mr. White was but three years old, the home was broken up, the brother and sister going away to work, and the father occupied here and there at one thing and another. During this time Mr. White lived with an aunt of the family and attended a district

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THE BOOK BUYER is published on the first of every month. Subscription price, $1.50 per year.
Subscriptions are received by all booksellers.

Subscribers in ordering change of address must give the old as well as the new address.

No. 1

Bound copies of Volumes IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, and XIII, $2.00 each. Volumes XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX, $1.50. Covers for binding, 50 cts. each. Bound volume sent on receipt of $1.00 and all the numbers in good condition. Postage prepaid. Volumes I, II, and III out of print. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK.

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THE RAMBLER

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following

extract is
made from
Mr. Ball's re-
markable book,

Things Chinese." It is very extraordinary to find an Edgar Allan

Poe in Chinese literature, B. C. 200. The Chinese prototype was an eminent statesman, Kia Yi by name, who was also "no mean poet."

A CHINESE "RAVEN."

The Fu-niao, or Bird of Fate.

'Twas in the month of chill November,
As I can very well remember
In dismal, gloomy, crumbling hall,
Betwixt moss-covered, reeking walls,
An exiled poet lay-

On his bed of straw reclining,
Half despairing, half repining;
When athwart the window sill,
Flew a bird of omen ill,
And seemed inclined to stay.

To my book of occult learning,
Suddenly I thought of turning,
All the mystery to know,

Of that shameless owl or crow,
That would not go away.

"Wherever such a bird shall enter,
'Tis sure some power above has sent her,
(So said the mystic book) to show
The human dweller forth must go,"-
But where it did not say.

Then anxiously the bird addressing,
And my ignorance confessing,
"Gentle bird, in mercy deign
The will of Fate to me explain,
Where is my future way?"

It raised its head as if 'twere seeking
To answer me by simple speaking,
Then folded up its sable wing,
Nor did it utter anything,
But breathed 66
a Well-a-day!"

More eloquent than any diction,
That simple sign produced conviction,
Furnishing to me the key
Of the awful mystery
That on my spirit lay.

"Fortune's wheel is ever turning,
To human eye there's no discerning
Weal or woe in any state;
Wisdom is to bide your fate;"
This is what it seemed to say
In that simple "Well-a-day."

Poe's apparent obligation to early Chinese literature brings to mind another interesting parallel. Many persons have remarked the similarity between Poe's tale of The Cask of Amontillado" and Balzac's story of "Le Grand Breteche" the motive being the same in each caseburying a living man in a tomb of mason

Copyright, 1900, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. All rights reserved.

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