LAURENCE ALMA-TADEMA

By courtesy of Messrs. Cassell & Company, we reproduce for the first time the portrait of Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema, by the Hon. John Collier. Miss AlmaTadema, it will be remembered, is the daughter of the Dutch R. A., AlmaTadema, an artist herself, and a clever writer. Her" Wings of Icarus" is a delicate bit of romance, told mostly by letters, and revealing frequent touches of brilliancy.

Henry Clews, the banker, has written a volume on "The Wall Street Point of View," which contains the advice of an eminently successful financier on the art of making and saving money. Messrs. Silver, Burdett & Co. will publish the book at an early date.

Another recent Wall Street book to be commended-more accurately a manual than Mr. Clews's-is a little handbook called "The A-B-C of Wall Street," written by Mr. Samuel Armstrong Nelson of the Evening Sun, for years a newspaper writer and conversant with all the Wall Street news which never gets into the newspapers.

Mr. Joseph A. Altsheler was born in southern Kentucky, near the close of the Civil War, and was educated in the common schools there and at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.

Since leaving school, his life has been spent in journalism, first on the Louisville Courier-Journal, where he began as reporter, passing through various grades, as dramatic critic, assistant city editor, city editor, commercial editor and editorial writer, serving in the last capacity for four years with Henry Watterson. For five years of that time he was also a regular writer for the New York Sun. He then came to New York and obtained work on the World, where he has been ever since. Several years ago he took charge of the tri-weekly edition of the World, which place he now occupies.

Mr. Altsheler began to write fiction. several years ago entirely by chance. He thought that the edition of the paper which he edited needed a serial and, not being able to obtain any otherwise which he thought suitable he concluded to try his own hand, and wrote for it a boy's story of adventure, which seemed to take well. This created a desire to write something

of a higher type. He then wrote several short stories which were accepted and printed in various magazines, and afterward a colonial novel called "A Knight of New York," which was offered to one of the magazines. Meanwhile in 1897 he wrote a Revolutionary romance called "The Sun of Saratoga" which was offered to D. Appleton & Co. and accepted. The colonial story was then withdrawn from the magazine office, revised and enlarged considerably, rechristened "A Soldier of Manhattan" and offered also to the Appletons, who accepted and published it. He has published since "A Herald of the West," a romance of 1812, a small novel called "The Last Rebel," based on memories of the Civil War, and the new book "In Circling Camps," which is reviewed on another page by Mr. F. C. Mortimer.

Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher is a native of Westmoreland, N. H. His boyhood

and youth were spent on a farm in northern Vermont, and his first work off the farm was as a teacher. His first newspaper work was done as the local correspondent for the country papers published in the county where he lived.

Mr. Thrasher came to Boston in 1892, in the employ of a publishing house with whom he remained for two years. His work since then has been that of a newspaper and magazine writer, except for a year and a half when he was assistant superintendent of the Farm School, on Thompson's Island, in Boston Harbor, one of the oldest and most successful schools of the kind in the United States. He has always taken a special interest in philanthropic educational work and has written. widely for publication in regard to it.

Five years ago, while Mr. Thrasher was a member of the staff of one of the Boston dailies, he went to Tuskegee, Ala., at the request of Mr. Booker T. Washing

ton, to report that year's session of the Tuskegee Negro Conference. What he saw of the South at that time, and of the work being done there for the education of the negro, interested Mr. Thrasher so much that since then he has devoted a large portion of his time to a study of this field, giving especial attention to the methods and work of Tuskegee Institute, and to their results.

Mr. Thrasher's new book, about Tuskegee, is more than a mere description of the work of a great school. It has all the interest of a vivid story of picturesque Southern life and conditions, giving as it does an account of Mr. Booker Washington's life, a history of the struggling but happy early years of the school, an explanation of the ways in which the institute does its work to-day, and a broad review of the results of Tuskegee Institute, in the work which its graduates and students are doing to extend its influence.

With three grand-uncles in the Revolutionary War, one on the Board of War, and a builder of some of the first war vessels in our United States Navy, one a Colonel in the Pennsylvania artillery, and one Washington's aide at the battle of Princeton, and his own grandfather a militiaman, with plenty of family legend and story about the Hessians and Washington's camps and armies, Mr. Griffis's inheritances from the Revolution are rich and varied.

It was just when most impressed by facts like these that he was invited by Messrs. W. A. Wilde & Co., of Boston, to write a series of books on "The Romance of American History." The first to appear was "The Romance of Discovery," the later volumes were "The Romance of American Colonization" and "The Romance of Conquest." The latest venture is in the form of a novel, entitled "The Pathfinders of the American Revolution."

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS

This is Mr. Griffis's first venture in a sustained fictitious narrative, though he has written many short stories and is widely known by his volumes relating to the Far East. His " Corea, the Hermit Nation," has been a standard work for years, and his "Religions of Japan" is "The equally accurate and valuable. American in Holland," published last A new year, is a record of recent travel. edition of the Corean book was recently published, containing much new matter.

Francis La Flesche, who was born between thirty-five and forty years ago, was early sent to an Indian Mission school established in 1857 by the Presbyterian Church on the eastern boundary of the Omaha Reservation and there made rapid progress. His mother was a full-blood Omaha, descended from a long line of men noted for their ability and leadership. His father was equally well born, of Ponka descent and was the head chief of his

FRANCIS LA FLESCHE

tribe. Late in the seventies young La Flesche attracted the attention of Senator Kirkwood, of Iowa, during a Congressional investigation of some Indian matters. The lad's fearless rectitude on that occasion fixed him in the Senator's memory; a short time after, when Senator Kirkwood became Secretary of the Interior, he wrote to young La Flesche to ascertain his fitness for a Government clerkship, and, being favorably impressed by the lad's letters, offered him a position in the Indian Bureau, where he has been ever since, having won several promotions for efficiency. Besides his literary studies, pursued during his evenings at home, La Flesche has taken a course of law at the National University Law School of Washington, and, after graduating, he studied and obtained the Master Degree. For his valuable and original contributions to ethnology he was elected a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most of the sketches contained in "The Middle Five" were written by Mr. La Flesche for his own

amusement, and were accidentally discovered by friends, who urged their publication in book form.

Anthony Hope has just finished reading the proofs of his new novel, "Quisanté," which is to be published early in September. This novel is mainly concerned with the fortunes of Alexander Quisanté, a man of foreign extraction whose brilliant abilities gain him a prominent position in English political life, and of Lady May Gaston, a girl of high birth, who, against the wishes of all her friends, becomes his wife. His character and hers, their history, the imperious alternative with which he was faced, how he met it, and the ultimate issue of his choice, form the chief subject of a story which presents many phases of social and political life in England, and especially in London, at the present day.

The first collection of Edwin Markham's verse since the publication of "The Man. With the Hoe," will be published early next month by McClure, Phillips & Co. Those who have looked on Mr. Markham's career as somewhat meteoric do not stop to consider the fact that he has been writing poetry for the past thirty years.

Literary fame came slower to Markham than to most writers, though competent judges who had seen his poems. in Scribner's and elsewhere years ago pronounced him a poet of extraordinary power and quality. The general recogni

tion of his abilities has not come to Mr. Markham too late in life to prevent solid enjoyment of a well-deserved fame. He is still under fifty years of age.

Mr. Nelson Lloyd, the author of "The Chronic Loafer," is a graduate of Pennsylvania State College and his first literary work was the writing of plays for production by the Dramatic Club of that college. After graduating he became a reporter for the New York Evening Sun, and he is now the city editor of that paper. Encouraged by the success of "The Chronic Loafer," which is about to go into a third edition, he is at present hard at work upon a long novel, the scene of which will again be Pennsylvania, his native State, and will cover a much broader field than that used in writing his first book.

Mr. Irving Bacheller, who is now about forty-five years of age, was born and bred in the "North Country," where the scene. of "Eben Holden," his first novel, is laid.

He

He is a graduate of St. Lawrence University, and was for some time a reporter and staff writer, first for the Brooklyn Times, and later for the New York World. founded the Bacheller Syndicate, and introduced to the great American public many famous writers, including Anthony Hope, Stephen Crane and Dr. Conan Doyle. Mr. Bacheller is also the author of many bits of dialect verse, rural and otherwise, that have been copied far and wide. The success of "Eben Holden " promises even greater popularity for his future work in prose.

Mr. Arthur Henry's first novel, "A Princess of Arcady," which is an idyllic piece of prose akin to "Paul and Virginia," will be published at an early date by Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company. Mr. Henry, who was born at Peccatonica, Ill., is about thirty years of age. As a boy he was not strong and, it being necessary for him to live out of doors, he never received any regular schooling, his early