of the plates she uses in her book to the sudden gleam of light from a hole made in the wall by some bold spirit determined to find out what the "foreign devil" was up to. Mrs. Bishop was fortunate when the crowd showed nothing more than curiosity. In one city a mob tried to burn her out of the inn; in another she was so badly hurt by stones that she was ill for days. To have to sleep in the same room with the pigs, as once happened, or with a coffin containing a corpse, as upon another occasion, were trifles. In the cities where foreigners were almost unknown Mrs. Bishop was always followed by a mob of a thousand or more persons shouting out all sorts of opprobrious epithets. Even when people were well disposed, their criticism was frank to the verge of brutality, for her personal appearance does not seem to agree with Chinese standards of beauty, and although she wears a No. 3 shoe, her feet were considered enormous. Foot-binding, according to Mrs. Bishop, is still prevalent in the interior of China. Except among the Tartar women and the very lowest class it is virtually universal, and the shoes of the peasant women seldom exceed four inches in length. The "hobble" on these hoofs looks as if it must be painful, and yet the women walk long distances without complaint. A Chinese woman with natural feet is ostracised; a girl with unbound feet has no chance of marriage, and a bridegroom, finding that his bride had large feet when he expected small ones, would be abundantly justified in returning her at once to her parents.

One of the obstacles in the way of travel on the upper Yangtze is the impossibility of understanding the currency of the country. After leaving Hankow the brass pieces known as cash were alone of any value. For one short journey Mrs. Bishop took with her seventy two pounds of cash, for which she had paid less than

five dollars. These brass coins about the size of an English half-penny, bearing Chinese characters, and with a square hole in the middle, are threaded one hundred at a time on a piece of straw rope. Whole hours were often wasted in counting and haggling over these strings of cash. Some kinds of cash were current in certain cities and not in others, and while it seems impossible to debase a currency of which you can get eight pounds for half a dollar, the Chinese shopkeepers were quick to detect spurious cash in a string or to refuse pieces not up to standard weight and size. The time lost in the examination and counting of cash was a constant vexation. But the Chinaman has used cash from time immemorial just as he has used fans and still uses them everywhere. Mrs. Bishop saw coolies fanning themselves at the treadmill, bearers as they ran along with chairs, mandarins, on the judgment seat, and sentries on guard. Chinese soldiers plied their fans as they marched to battle with the Japanese.

According to Mrs. Bishop the curse and danger of China to-day is opium. So far as she was able to gather from Chinese sources, about eighty per cent. of the men and forty per cent. of the women are addicted to opium smoking. The habit is growing more and more common, and while many opium smokers are by no means slaves to the vice or wrecks, its effects are patent enough to have led some observers to attribute the success of Japan in the late war to her rigid exclusion of opium from the Mikado's empire. China wasted her energy in smoke and dreams. One of the great statesmen of China recently said that opium smoking would result in his country becoming the laughing-stock of the world. There are associations in the large cities organized for the purpose of fighting this curse, but as yet the tide is all one way and allpowerful. Some reasons for the grip that

the vice has obtained Mrs. Bishop finds in the absence of newspapers and books, and the poverty of the lower classes.

In writing of the work of Christian missions in China, Mrs. Bishop gives warm praise to the work as she saw it. At the same time she admits that the results as yet are unsatisfactory. If China is to be Christianized, it must be through native teachers. The danger at present is that China, like Japan, may accept Western civilization, while rejecting the Christian religion.

Philip G. Hubert, Jr.

BOOKS OF SERIOUS PURPOSE

In

two reasons: That conditions differ greatly and one theory cannot fit all cases; and that the practical man always distrusts the theorist "on principle." illustration one may note the test to which a Connecticut manufacturer put Mr. Gilman's list of profit-sharers. He wrote to each of the thirty odd firms on the list for a verdict on the business advisability of adopting profit-sharing, and received not a single reply unqualifiedly indorsing it as a "business proposition."

The present volume avoids this risk of unreality. It is in the main, as has been said, a record of actually existing modifications of the harder conditions of employment abroad and at home" wellfare" modifications, as Mr. Gilman calls

pose, the sociologist with a philanthropic theory is apt to miss his aim. Such an ethical novel or philanthropic treatise is more than likely to prove an experiment in unreality, to paraphrase the name given by Mr. Wyckoff to the record of his discoveries in the rôle of unskilled laborer. The novelist unconsciously distorts life, the philanthropist facts. It is to be accounted the chief virtue of Mr. Gilman's A Dividend to Labor that it is largely a record and not a treatise. Its author is an authority on profit-sharing. He is a conscientious, careful and thorough investigator. He has the judicial temperament. And yet even he, when he preaches profit-sharing, is not convincing to the practical manto the employer of labor whom, most of all, he wishes to convince. This is for

A DIVIDEND TO LABOR. A Study of Employees' Welfare Institutions. By Nicholas Paine Gilman. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.75.

THE PURITAN AS A COLONIST AND REFORMER. By Ezra Hoyt Byington. Little, Brown & Co., $2.00.

THE MAGNA CHARTA AND OTHER GREAT CHARTERS OF ENGLAND, WITH AN HISTORICAL TREATISE AND COPIOUS EXPLANATORY NOTES. By Boyd C. Barrington, Esq., LL.B., of Philadelphia Bar. William J. Campbell.

says, the relation of employer to employee. These well-fare modifications embrace every sort and kind of departure from the theory of labor as a mere commodity, from establishing libraries and clubhouses to devices for making life more comfortable at the factory, or for assisting employees to become home-owners. The showing is most impressive, giving perhaps forty instances here in the United States of attempts to "do something" for the welfare of employees. To the sane optimist these facts are the more encouraging because they are a record of individual initiative as the circumstances of each case suggested; that is, the modifications are the diversely natural up-growths of many minds without reference to any particular social theory. The introduction to the book is also full of significance. It recognizes the difficulty (already alluded to) encountered by the theorist in securing" straight" facts from the practical man because of the latter's distrust, humorously comparing the manufacturer to the Duke of Wellington who once complained that he was "much exposed to authors." It also recognizes the fact that

the philanthropic manufacturer who is not a competent man of business is the employee's worst enemy. Mr. Gilman says: "A hard employer who keeps his men steadily at work for years, on the average wage, is much more of a real benefactor to the operative than a genial employer whose inexperience or lack of capacity closes his factory in a few months." Other features, such as the account of Robert Owen or the discussion of profit-sharing, are interesting, but not of equal value. Taken as a whole, the book is one that no student of present day problems can afford to miss.

In these days of the Cromwellian revival, with popular attention turned toward questions of colonization and expansion, a direct, straightforward narrative, such as Mr. Byington's, of the way the Pilgrims and Puritans solved these questions in New England has a very present interest. The Puritan as a Colonist and Reformer is supplementary to "The Puritan in England and New England," Mr. Byington's previous study, which met with so favorable a reception. While no pretensions are put forward to original research, the conclusions of the most recent authorities are constantly given, and no pains has been spared to make the study exhaustive. The style is simple and the tone judicial, if that word properly applies to an author who writes under the strongest sympathy with the religious intensity of the New England forefathers. Certain points, which scholars have in general acknowledged, but which are contrary to popular tradition, are here emphasized-for example, that for the most part the Puritans came from "good families "; that their ministers were often university men and Church of England clergymen, being come-outers only in the sense of not accepting ritualism as either

necessary or (in excess) as tolerable; and that their treatment of the Indians was kind and just, wholly undeserving the oftquoted sneer that Puritans fell on their knees and then on the aborigines. The chapter devoted to John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, is a most interesting account of one of the most pathetic failures recorded in history, whether one looks at it from the standpoint of Eliot or of the praying Indians. On the side are the herculean labors of the man (of which his famed translation of the Bible was only an incident), his great personal sacrifices, his sublime faith and his wonderful personal influence with the Indians. On the other side are the Indians themselves, gathered in prosperous, self-governing villages, fairly started on a career of civilization, when the reaction of paganism, embodied in King Philip's war, left them stranded between the combatants, distrusted equally by both, and finally abandoned to the ignominious fate of gradual extinction. It is not an episode to strengthen one's faith in the profitableness of missionarying. The chapters devoted to the practical work of Jonathan Edwards and to the indifference of Shakespeare to the Puritan movement are interesting and informing if not conclusive.

Ellis, Eyton, Freeman, Stubbs and Rounds, to mention a few conspicuous names, have pretty thoroughly threshed out the subject of early English rights from Domesday on. A person not an historical expert can hardly expect to add anything of value. Mr. Barrington does not lay claim to be such an expert. His apparent intention is to put the conclusions of Blackstone, Coke and Thompson on the Great Charter within reach of the "general reader "-something that hardly seems worth while.

Arthur Reed Kimball.

THE publication, a couple of years ago,

of Mr. Bullen's "Cruise of the Cachalot" gave birth to what promised to be a new fashion in books of the deep, a rival to the historical romance, but the movement died almost in its incipiency, for lack of combatants, notably in the field of fiction. A few sea tales appeared, and were consigned to instant oblivion, because they lacked the elements of popularity. Captain Slocum, however, has demonstrated that success can be achieved in all forms of narrative, if only one has a story to tell, and knows how to tell it. His account of his lonely trip around the world in his little yawl will be ranked with the books of its kind that will endure, for he has a style, simple, straightforward and vigorous that is admirably adapted to its subject, and a subject that has the everfresh charm which, for some mysterious reason or other, never fails to appeal to us, that of man alone and dependent upon his own resources, courage and strength. It is the charm of "Robinson Crusoe." Captain Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World demonstrates anew how interesting solitude can be, when with it comes danger, the need of skill, the test of a man's mettle. Moreover, this daring skipper is a Yankee, from Nova Scotia, where, he holds, the best Yankees are born and bred, and therefore 'possessed of a happy sense of humor. His story tells itself, and therefore is engrossing reading. [Century Co., Il., 12mo, $1.50.]

Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart's story of old Uncle 'Riah Washington, the negro healer, who relieved all manner of physical and mental distress by taking it unto himself and who was of such robustiousness that he managed a dozen different maladies at once and overcome all, is a character whose interest as one who occupied a

unique position in relation to his fellows is enhanced by the humor of a quaint philosophy that punctuates this record of his doings with many a phrase of his, like "hit's all right to take boa'ders, jes so you don't let 'em keep house," which was apropos of his methods as a doctor. "Uncle Still's Famous Weather Prediction" introduces another darkey whose reputation for "wisdoms" and "knowledges" can best be judged by this unusual use of the plural plural to emphasize it. Holly and Pizen, Mrs. Stuart's latest book, includes three other sketches of negro life and character in her best manner, and makes an entertaining contribution of fiction to the literature of the South. [The Century Company, 16mo, $1.25.]

In Just About a Boy Mr. W. S. Phillips writes entertainingly of many trips fishing and hunting with a Western lad whom he found running wild along the Missouri River. This original young American distinguished between a large fish and a smaller one by calling the former "Uh Ole Balaam" and the latter "Uh Little Rastus," and had other equally appropriate names for the wild creatures of the earth and air. Moreover he knew how to trail quail, which any sportsman will admit is a method of hunting them not generally understood. But the boy who explains how "they kind o' flutter in th' dust like uh chicken does in th' middle o' th' day, 'n' always come back to 'bout th' same place at th' same time every day," knew more about the wild creatures than many a mighty hunter. The author's record of his wildwood wisdom preserves many interesting and original observations which will recommend the book to all who follow the brooks and forest paths. [H. S. Stone & Company, 16mo, $1.25.] The second series of The Law's Lumber

Room, Francis Watt's interesting papers on the curious laws and punishments of the past in England, is a most successful little volume of carefully selected data worked into several chapters, written in a very engaging manner, quite as charming for their literary charm as they are valuable as concise histories of their subjects. Tyburn Tree, Pillory and Carts' Tail, State Trials for Witchcraft, A Pair of Parricides, Some Disused Roads to Matrimony, The Border Law and The Sergeantat-Law are the chapter headings in this book. Mr. Watt enlivens his detail of the ancient and honorable course of the law with many amusing anecdotes of its sometime victims, as of the one Swift wrote of, who

. . . While the rabble was bawling,

Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling;

He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack, And promised to pay for it-when he came back."

Or of that remarkable highwayman, Claude Duval, for whom Ladies of Quality came, in tears and masks, to see him swing, and whose epitaph, in Covent Garden Church, read:

"Here lies Du Vall: reader, if male thou art, Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart." Such bits as these of a humor that moves one, despite the weird of it, are deftly woven into the fabric of all his histories of the savage customs of long ago. [John Lane, 16mo, $1.75.]

Many a man will thank Mr. Phillpotts for The Human Boy, a book of stories about a group of lads at a boarding school, which includes types of most of the interesting youngsters whom we always have been indebted to, and probably always will be, for whatever pleasure attaches to our consideration of these institutions, unfortunately so generally unsatisfactory. Of

old doctor's little daughter, fought that terrific battle with big Bray; Bailey and the other who stole off through the woods at night to become "buckeneers;" and those who came to grief after that desperate attempt to smoke a pipe like Steggles; the boy who turned out bad and was expelled -are all fine new editions of the ones we went to school with long ago. Gideon, the Jew, though, is a character uncommon and interesting enough to demand a special word of praise from every man who has not outgrown the proper appreciation of youth, which is a fine thing as well as being proof positive that a man's heart is yet young. This lad who exhibited for three pence, or for two, to friends among the fellows, his gold tooth, which was a false one, of course, and could be unscrewed and taken out-who, when the others went broke, bought up their bats, knives and marbles and afterwards sold them back at auction realizing such enormous profits and who, withal, was scrupulously honest and such a punctilious little gentleman, is a figure altogether unique in the fiction of youth, and Mr. Phillpotts's picture of him is a masterly portrait in miniature. [Harper & Bros., 12mo, $1.25.]

Lyrics and songs of the seasons, birds, brooks, and out-of-doors generally make up the best part of Mr. Stratton's book, Sparks and Flames, and will recommend it to the many who are, and not without reason, aweary of subjective verse. Surely such lines as these from the poem called "June," are very refreshing:

"The day delights to dally by,
And drowse in golden light,
While with her silver-beaming sky,
Loiters the lovely night.

""Tis June once more within my heart;
Through all my life 'tis June,
And buds of thoughts discordant, part
To blossom into tune."