school until he was twelve years of age. By this time he had mastered about all the district school could give him, owing to a knowledge of literature decidedly unusual in a boy of his years.

When Mr. White had reached the age of thirteen years the family once more found itself under one roof, this time in western Kansas, where the brother had taken out a claim. The little desultory schooling he was able at this time to secure received a check from a change in family affairs-the marriage of the sister -which left Mr. White cook and housekeeper of the new home, which soon became a kind of bachelor's hall, in which Mr. White was, as he himself has put it, "the kid" and the ruler. Otherwise, he says, he could not be the cook. And then came a period of time during which he farmed, cooked and herded on the ranch, working for board and wages, and supporting himself entirely until he was sixteen years old. By that time he had money enough saved to enable him to attend the Stockton Academy, a western institution of learning, for five months. After this he taught school until he was eighteen years of age when he entered the preparatory department of the State University of Kansas, working along irregularly, by reason of his having to stop to teach, until he had completed the sophomore year of the course.

At this time Mr. White secured an appointment to go to Mexico as a collector on a scientific expedition in geology and mineralogy. It was during his stay in Mexico that he wrote his first book, a romance, and "finally decided," as he himself puts it," for a life try at literature." In the course of a year Mr. White returned to the University of Kansas, completed the junior year of the course, came on to the east to Cambridge, and was graduated from Harvard University in the class of

294.

The first part of the year 1895 was spent by Mr. White in tramping through Italy. Upon his return to this country that year he took up his residence in Chicago, and worked for one year in the Bureau of Charities of that city. He then entered the John Crerar Library, assuming the position of reference librarian, a place he held until last fall. He has been for three years a resident of two of the social settlements of Chicago-the one a home. near Goose Island of that city, and the other the well-known Hull House.

In the September of 1899 he resigned. his position as reference Librarian, and left Chicago. After a walking trip of two or three hundred miles over the continental divide, Mr. White settled in Denver, Colorado, where he spent the winter of 1899-1900 in literary work, afterwards proceeding to the Pacific Coast. He is at present stopping in Albany, Oregon.

Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. have in press two new books by Mr. White, "Quicksand," a novel, and a volume of short stories entitled "When Eve Was Not Created."

The collaboration of Josiah Flynt, "a philosopher of side-streets, the first authority living on matters that happen up an alley," and Francis Walton, who modestly calls himself a reporter of the crowd that passes, in describing their joint dealings with the great unwashed, has resulted in some clever and interesting contributions to the literature of curbstone philosophy. Mr. Flynt's "Tramping with Tramps" was not only an amusing experience. It was a study in sociology, which has thrown much new light upon the problems of the people. Mr. Flynt and Mr. Walton have recently finished a book, which they expect to name "The Powers that Prey." It will be published this fall by McClure, Phillips & Co. They are at present working upon

HELEN M. WINSLOW

another book, dealing with the two opposing forces the powers that prey and the powers that rule. Mr. Flynt is also engaged upon a book on "The Criminal's Idea of Himself and His Work," while his collaborator is working independently upon a novel dealing with contemporary types in the United States.

Another book bearing the McClure, Phillips imprint is from the pen of Mr. Charles Battell Loomis, and will be called "Yankee Enchantments." It is a collection of forty stories, which appeared in the New York Sun, and other papers throughout the country. Mr. Loomis is a clever writer, and through his book, "The Four Masted Cat-boat," was placed in the front ranks of the American humorists. This volume, with "Just Rhymes" (his first publication) and the forthcoming stories, complete his literary repertoire. He was born in Brooklyn, forty years ago. His parents, Charles His parents, Charles Battell and Mary Worthington, both possessed very remarkable voices as well as a keen sense of the ludicrous and an ability to mimic. The musical gifts de

scended to Mr. Loomis' brother, Harvey W. Loomis, the composer. The gift for mimicry came down to the writer, who has employed it in his series of imitations of the styles of various authors, and in a gift for impersonation that has stood him. in good stead in his readings from his own. works. Mr. Loomis began life as a clerk, and although he soon made up his mind. that one was never less gifted for clerical work than he, he kept it up for thirteen. years, meantime trying his wings as a writer. "Yankee Enchantments" will be illustrated by Miss Fanny Young Cory, whose fancy and humor run in parallel lines to those of Mr. Loomis.

Helen M. Winslow, author of "Concerning Cats" is a well known newspaper and club woman, of Boston, a writer of ability, editor of the Club Woman, and secretary of the Boston Authors' Club. She has been a lover of cats all her life, and has some famous ones at her home at Forest Hills. She has been aided in her compilation of the book by other wellknown cat fanciers and cat lovers, and such organizations as the Beresford Cat Club have recommended her book.

Mr. Duffield Osborne was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1858. He was graduated from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1875, from Columbia College with honors in 1870, receiving the degree A.B.; from the Columbia Law School in 1881, with the degree LL.B., and was admitted to the bar in the same year. In 1882 he received the degree of A.M. from Columbia College after a special course and examination. He practiced law in the city of New York until 1892, when he became assistant secretary and later acting secretary to the Brooklyn Department of City Works, which position he held until 1894; going abroad shortly

Face, turban and voice belonged to my mother's old slave-nurse, who, I presume, took me to her capacious bosom whenever I paid my yearly visits to the old Virginian home. The last time I ever saw her was just as I was grown up. There she was, as black, as shiny and as loving as ever, rapturously hailing me after years of absence as 'her honey chile come home fo' su'.' These faint, shimmering recollections of a world that has quite passed away are soon crowded out by more vivid and sterner pictures.

"I became a pioneer, a settler's child, an outwester-a boy, in short. For four years I remained a boy, as wild, hardy and free-roving as if I were a red Indian. Cattle-hunting, in all weathers and in all seasons, with eyes like a hawk's and a body inured to fatigue, serenely unconscious of my abnormal self, I lived the life of a Kansas farmer's child during the hot years of the war, laying up a great store of knowledge in matters far out of the reach of most women's experience. I saw the fringe of the war and heard the dread sound of cannon fired in battle.

66

Last year, when walking down the Avenue de l'Opéra in Paris, gazing at the wonderful creations in hats and bonnets that adorn that thoroughfare, I was reminded of my first purchase of a hat. I was given money, sent to the nearest town, and told to 'please myself.' I came back the proud possessor of a forage cap of the 2nd Kansas cavalry, and I wore it, too, with immense satisfaction for a long time. It wasn't exactly a 'sweet thing in bonnets,' but it stood hard work very well.

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"I was a big girl when the first dawning consciousness broke upon me that I was different from other girls. A youthful friend asked me how to spell my name, and I couldn't tell her. She has since confided to me that she stood in abject awe of the fearful familiarity I showed with horses, and the skill with which I rode any and everything possessed of a back and four legs. I could handle horses well enough and drive cattle like a Fury, but I knew not how to spell my own name, and therefore was ashamed. Authority, looking on at my wild career, and seeing with satisfaction that I was leaving behind a certain delicacy of constitution-a relic of terrible illness in baby hood-now decided that it was time to train me, if ever I was to become a girl. The fiat went forth; I ceased to be a boy, and in a very brief space I found myself inside a school for young ladies in Paris. No wilder colt than I was ever bitted, but I soon took a leading position in three subjects-French composition, gymnastics and school fun. A decayed noble led our faltering

steps in the paths of composition, and despite grotesque mistakes, due to my being a foreigner, used to hold me up as a model, because I could tell a story, particularly if there was any fighting in it. Our gymnastic master was a fireman in brazen helmet and preposterous broad belt, fastening in a scutty little blouse. We were dressed in fantastic imitation of him, only without the helmet, while to our belts was attached a stout ring. Monsieur le Pompier used to hold up aspirants with this ring, while they dabbled at the rope with aimless fingers. This was called the

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'Mademoiselle,' said he, with a deep bow, 'you are instructed, I see. You have had lessons.'

"So I had, on every grapevine within a tenmile radius of our house on the prairie.

"Thus the process continued, first in France, then in Germany, then in Italy, winter after winter of study, pleasures and new impressions. I took kindly to the old-world civilization, and reveled in what it had to give. I don't even now like to have a mediæval story toned down and explained. I like them horrible and ogre-like. And yet, if I were to be asked which of the periods of my life I could least afford to lose, I should answer and say I could least spare out of my life those four wild years in the prairie, when I was a boy, wore a soldier's cap, and didn't know how to write my name."

Messrs. R. G. Badger & Co., of Boston, begin this fall the publication of a new series of American verse in the Lyric Library, which will include new volumes by Clinton Scollard, Ernest McGaffey, Madison Cawein, John Vance Cheney, Mary Elizabeth Blake and others. The books will be small in size, tastefully bound in limp leather, and have a titlepage from an original design made specially for them.

Henry Norman, whose volume on "The Peoples and Politics of the Far East" contained many prophecies regarding Rus

MRS. ADELA E. ORPEN

sia, which were considered merely daring conjectures at the time of publication but have since been almost without exception fulfilled, has written a series of papers about the Russia of to-day, which promises in the light of current events to be the most important magazine undertaking of the coming year. As is natural, Mr. Norman has been led to make the closest applications of his knowledge to recent developments, and certain of these papers will deal directly with the present condition of things in the Far East. An unusual collection of illustrations will accompany Mr. Norman's text, including sketches, maps, plans, and pictures from photographs taken by the author. The picturesque side of the subject will be reproduced with uncommon vividness and completeness. The articles are promised. for early publication in Scribner's Magazine.

The Rambler.

ROBABLY no country on earth can

PROBABLY

boast of so vast a foreign literature, dealing with its people, its institutions and characteristics, as China; and certainly no other country can boast of having so successfully kept secret its real life, national and individual. From Marco Polo down to the present day there has been no end of the making of books on the "Middle Kingdom," yet those who dwelt there longest, who studied most closely its people and institutions, have invariably been the first to confess that they understood them least. Recent events have made China the centre of contemporary history, the puzzle of the world politics of to-day. She has risen suddenly, and recalled forcibly the prophecy made some six years ago by an Englishman, the late Charles Pearson, of an emergence, after European tutelage, of the yellow and black races from their inferiority; of the rise of states that shall treat on a footing of equality with the erstwhile white masters of the world, as Japan is already doing to day.

China is the chief factor, but not the whole of the modern political problem, which ranges from St. Petersburg to

OVERLAND TO CHINA. By Archibald R. Colquhoun. Illustrated. Harper & Brothers, 8vo, $3.00.

CHINA, THE LONG-LIVED EMPIRE. By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore. Illustrated. The Century Co., 8vo, $2.50. VILLAGE LIFE IN CHINA. By Arthur H. Smith, D.D. Fleming H. Revell Co. Illustrated. 8vo, $2.00.

A CYCLE OF CATHAY. By W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D. Illustrated. Second edition. Fleming H. Revell Co., 8vo, $2.00.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM. By S. Wells Williams. Second edition. Illustrated. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2 vols., 8vo, $9.00.

THINGS CHINESE. By J. Dyer Bull. Third edition) Charles Scribner's Sons, 8vo, $5.00 net.

THE PEOPLES AND POLITICS OF THE FAR EAST. By Henry Norman. Illustrated. Charles Scribner's Sons, 8vo, $4.00.

KANG YU WEI

The "Modern Sage" of China [From "China: The Long-Lived Empire." Copyright, 1900, by The Century Co.]

Korea; from Constantinople, via the Persian Gulf, to the Indian frontier; from Berlin to Kiao-Chau; from Paris to Cochin-China; while from our own Pacific coast it stretches, via Hawaii, Tutuila and Guam, to Manila-with this difference, however, that the Siberian and Manchurian markets are as important to us as is the development of China itself. England has deliberately walked into a war that may prove disastrous to her in other regions than those in which it is approaching a fizzling, inglorious conclusion; and she is confronted by a new continental coalition, to which she cannot, for the moment, oppose a political combination of equal strength, for the interests of the United States in the Orient are commercial, not political, and have been guaran