upon a coincidence, and a three-ply coincidence at that, it is such an airy, gossamer, soap-bubble sort of book that one could not reasonably weigh it down with the ponderous reproach of melodrama. It is nothing more serious than the history of a masquerade ball, to which the guests have been invited on a new and ingenious system. In place of tickets of admission, two packs of playing cards have been sent out, one pack distributed among the men, the other among the women; and when the maskers arrive, the cards not only serve to admit them, but also to pair them off for the evening. Now it happens that the hero, who has not been invited but hears of the masquerade quite by accident, decides to run the risk of going without an invitation, and cutting a pack at random, draws for his card of admission the ten of hearts. It happens further that there is another unbidden guest at the masquerade, a woman, and her card also is the ten of hearts. And finally it happens that when the fun of the evening is at its height, the announcment is suddenly made that there is a thief in their midst. Watches, rings, necklaces, a fortune in jewels, are missing. The doors are hastily locked, and identification of the guests begins. The crucial point is the third ten of hearts-who is the holder of it? And here again coincidence plays a curious and this time a conclusive trick.

An example of a series of dramatic happenings told without a touch of melodrama, is Jules of the Jules Great Heart, by Lawof the rence Mott. Jules VerGreat Heart baux is a French Canadian trapper, whom the Hudson Bay Company regards as an outlaw, and there is a price upon his head. The other trappers, whites, halfbreeds and Indians track him persistently; but he slips through their fingers, time after time, doubling on his trail and eluding his pursuers with the cunning of the furry creatures that he has so long hunted. The sense of the cold and loneliness of northern forests, the pitiless cruelty of northern storms is given with the same sort of strength that gave distinction to Jack London's early Alaska stories; and there is in addition a warm

human quality, a suggestion of kindliness and sympathetic heart beats, which is precisely the quality that has always been missing in the author of The SeaWolf. Jules of the Great Heart stands out prominently among the books of the month, not merely for its individual merit as a vigorous picture of a strange and interesting phase of life, a charactter study of uncommon quality; but more particularly because of the conviction which comes over the reader that the author of such a book is destined to do other and bigger things-that he is a man to be remembered and watched.

If you are looking for melodrama, you might as well pass over the dainty little volume called Seffy,

Seffy

which

John Luther Long defines in his subtitle as "a little comedy of country country manners.” You cannot reasonably expect much lime-light, when the scene is a sleepy little Maryland village, and the hero a slow and bashful Pennsylvania Dutchman. But if you want a tender little story, exquisitely told, and full of the delicate half-tones of human emotions, then you will appreciate this chronicle of poor, slow, blundering Seffy, who fell so far short of the village standard of manners that his blunders gave an undeserving rival the chance to step in and win his Sally away from him. It is a story which shares the tenderness and pathos of Madame. Butterfly, even though it lacks the former's picturesqueness.

Ben Blair

An uneven book, which has some chapters of refreshing strength, is Ben Blair, by Will Lillibridge. The atmosphere of western ranch life is unmistakable; the local colour, the local point of view have a genuine ring to them; to this extent the book carries its credentials with it. Good also, in its way, and full of grim interest, are the opening chapters in which Ben Blair's mother, the poor wreck whom her husband's ill usage has fairly hustled to her grave, dies tragically, and little Ben, scarcely more than a baby, burrows desperately into an underground tunnel, to escape from the man who would make him share her fate.

Ben's adoption by a kind neighbor, his growth in bodily strength and in cowboy knowledge, his friendship ripening slowly into love for the girl on the adjoining ranch-all this is told with vivid directness and sincerity. But the girl has a restless desire for a different life from that of a western cattle ranch; and she has a father willing and able to gratify her whim to come east, and a worldly mother more than willing to cajole her into a loveless marriage in New

York. The part of the book which tells how Ben Blair comes to the metropolis in pursuit of his lost love, and like Young Lochinvar, snatches her triumphantly away, almost from before the altar rail

this part cannot perhaps be fairly stigmatised as crude, but it lacks the sureness of touch that stamped the earlier chapters, and it shows besides that blemish of many a better book than Ben Blair can aspire to be, the taint of melodrama. Frederic Taber Cooper.

N November 4th of 1905, the New York Times in its Saturday Supplement published a question addressed to it by a correspondent in Morgantown, West Virginia. The correspondent wished to know whether the works of A. B. Longstreet, the Georgia author were still in print. To this inquiry the editor of the Saturday Supplement replied: "We find no record in Allibone or elsewhere of this author."

Here is still another instance of the mutability of literary fame. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, of Georgia, was born at a time (1790-1870) when the man "who did" was the happy exception and did not belong to a remarkable average. Longstreet was widely known as a lawyer, a judge of the Supreme Court, and a clergyman in the Methodist Church; at different times, he was President of Emory College in Georgia, and of the Universities of Mississippi and South Carolina. He was, however, best known as a journalist and author.

Longstreet lived at a time when, in the United States, the lawyer, teacher, minister and author, were confined within restricted limits, and when it was not unusual for personality to become picturesque and unique. He was a popular law

yer and minister in the days of the old South, when those professions necessitated long journeys on horseback through lonely stretches of primeval forests, and across country settlements palpitating with the glow of a strenuous, yet, untrammeled life. From these long itineracies through the backwoods and villages of the Georgia of the first half of the last century, when he held religious services in crossroads "meeting houses," and attended court at the small county seats, Longstreet acquired an immense amount of first-hand knowledge of elemental human nature, and learned to know both God and the devil. From this rich fund of experiences, came his famous book, Georgia Scenes, which, after having been out of print for a number of years, was republished in 1897, by Messrs Harper and Brothers.

That Augustus Baldwin Longstreet is so entirely forgotten by the literary editors of the present day, may account for the fact that no one of them, aparently, has noticed the inspiration drawn from him by a famous contemporary English novelist. Let us compare a passage from the twenty-third chapter of Hardy's The Trumpet Major describing a drill of raw recruits with a passage from Longstreet's Georgia Scenes which depicts the drill of a Southern military company.

LONGSTREET.

"But as every man was anxious to see how the rest stood, those on the wings pressed forward for that purpose, till the whole line assumed nearly the form of a crescent.

men,

'Why, look at 'em,' said the captain; 'why, gentleall are you crooking in at both ends, so that you will get on to me by and by! Come gentlemen, dress, dress!' "This was accordingly done; but impelled by the same motives as before. they soon resumed their former figure, and SO they were permitted to remain. "and I want gentlemen, if you, please, to pay particular attention to the word of command, just exactly as I I give it to you. hope you will have a little patience, gentlemen, if you please; and if I should be agoing wrong, I will be much obliged for the best, and I hope you will excuse me, if you please.

"Tention the whole! Please to observe, gentlemen, that at the word "fire" you must fire; that is, if any of your guns

are loaden'd, you must not shoot in yearnest, but only make pretence like; and you, gentlemen,

fellow soldiers, who's armed with nothing but sticks, ridingswitches and cornstalks, needn't go through the firings, but stand as you are, and keep yourselves to yourselves.

"Handsomely done! and all together, too, except that one-half of you were a leetle too soon, and the other half a leetle too late. "Tention the whole! To the leftleft, no-right-that is, the left-I mean the right, left, wheel, march!'

"In this way he was strictly obeyed; some wheeling to the right, some to the left, and some to the right-left, or both ways.

"Stop! halt! Let us try again! I could not just then tell my right hand from my left! You must excuse me, if you please; experience makes perfect, as the saying is. Long as I have served, I find something to learn every day; but alls one for that—.'"

and cabbage-stumps, just to make believe, must, of course, use 'em as if they were the real thing. Now, then, cock fawlocks! Present! Fire! (Not shoot in earnest, you know.) Very goodvery good indeed; except that some of you were a little too soon, and the rest a little too late.

66 6

"""Tention! To the right-left wheel. I mean-no, no right wheel. Marr-r-rch!'

"Some wheeled to the right and some to the left, and some obliging men, including Cripplestraw, tried to wheel both ways.

'Stop, stop; try again. Gentlemen, unfortunately when I'm in a hurry I can never remember my right hand from my left, and never could as a boy. You must excuse me, please. Practice makes perfect, as the saying is; and much as I have learnt since I listed, we always find something new. Now. then, right wheel! march! halt!-'"

SUPPOSE no generation of men has possessed a theory of education sounder in principle or more ingenious in detail than ours. We know what we ought to be doing, and several ways in which we might be doing it; and all this knowledge is so important and so satisfying as to obscure the minor consideration that we are actually doing something quite different. Hence, the wonder and even indignation with which, from time to time, we find ourselves regarding a fact which is intelligible enough, Heaven knows, in the light of that consideration. I refer to the low status of the teacher as a human being among other human beings.

By the teacher, I mean most teachers, in a crude numerical sense, most of those who sit behind desks in schoolrooms, whether the individual chances to constitute a primary or a post-graduate cog in the "educational" machine. It may not be a reasonable thing to lump all these persons together. They all sit behind desks; have they anything else in common? What is this pedagogue, when we come to think of him?-it will not be often; most of our thought is devoted to his precious charges. What is this teaching person?-a priest? or a sad ass? or simply a poor, devil being crushed under the educational car? Does he practise "the noblest of professions," or, on the whole, a rather mean trade? Is he a scientist sworn to apply the rules of "pedagogy," or a missionary devoted to the diffusion of the gospel of "culture"? Socrates, Erasmus, the Arnolds, William James: why is this not "the noblest of professions"? Ah, but what of the dull girl (underpaid, perhaps, but certainly dull) who usefully whacks the three R's into the resilient head of the public infant! What of the Ph.D. of a postgraduate instructor, who, himself as full

of meat as an addled egg, is incapable of whacking anything into anybody's head? Think of the number of guileless but mischievous persons who have taken up teaching as a makeshift (yes, there are parallel cases. in the ministry. and elsewhere), and who have kept on teaching, because it really doesn't matter to them what they do, or because they can't think of anything else to do. What with our lack of a religious establishment, and the small and diminishing number of our government sinecures, they would be hard put to it to lie down with equal comfort in the shadow of any other profession or trade. After all, the worst thing about it is that all people of this class are not drones; many of them become respectable mechanics, abundantly able to do what they are paid to do: actually, if not theoretically, successful teachers. Think again of the class, which passes almost insensibly from one side of the desk to the other; men of acquisitive mind, with a natural bent towards the academic life. Does even this favoured class find in the routine of teaching an opportunity and an incentive for the exertion of its best powers? The question of first motive is not the important one; people drift into all professions and trades, and in teaching, as in other pursuits, often do good service. But in what, practically, does the good service of a teacher consist, in most cases and in the long run?

We can all imagine the ideal teacher; most of us are able to connect that ideal, by however slender a link, with the memory of some particular person. Happily for us, there do exist teachers with an insatiable desire to impart, and an indomitable instinct to arouse; whose hand cannot be subdued to what it works in. They are, and must be to the end of the chapter, persons. Their method of teaching is as truly a part of them as their style would be in literature, or their

tactics in war. It is sufficiently clear that if all those men and women who sit behind desks in schoolrooms were of this type, we should need no text-books, we should need no stated pedagogical theory. These masters, in truth, afford the only reliable data for the formulation of such a theory; precisely as literary masters afford the only reliable data for grammatical and rhetorical theory. The work of such men embodies principles which the rest of us, in our laborious way, make shift to reduce to rule. In constructing our code we have taken one step towards efficiency-an efficiency which, alas! is not required of us, and which few of us are strong enough to pursue without hope of approbation. In teaching, as in other callings, the veritable master is rare; but here, as elsewhere, there are numerous degrees of usefulness below, yet not remote from, any degree of mastery. The sad fact remains that the kind of usefulness required of the ordinary teacher is at a polar remoteness from that excellence to which, as it appears in the exceptional teacher, we yield a complimentary homage. To force our pupils to learn things, to excite them to a shallow mental activity, is to make ourselves indispensable; to arouse and cultivate in them, at whatever expense to ourselves, a strong and intelligent desire for true education, is, however admirable à proceeding in theory, a practical impertinence.

Does not this fact go far towards accounting for the low average of intelligence among our lower teachers, of true cultivation among our higher teachers, of a dignified effectiveness upon whatever professional level we may choose to turn the searchlight? Narrow minds, petty souls, flabby wills, making a go of it in this noblest of professions; it is a spectacle to be deplored rather than marvelled at. The limitations of the teaching class, as a class, are, we have often been told, due to the small consideration with which its lower ranks, at least, are treated by a gross world. They are not paid enough, they are not given a chance socially, and what not. Isn't this rather putting the cart before the horse? Who says that they fail to teach what they are expected to teach, that they are paid less

than their task deserves, that they are given less social consideration than other menials of their class? Yes, menials— so far as their work is concerned. One may have the luck to have a gentlewoman for a housemaid; she adds, perhaps, a touch of refinement to the processes of dusting furniture and making beds. But she is paid, and ought to be paid, for doing what she is required to do; hers is honest work, but we do not commonly invite her to the family table, or assure her that she is practising the noblest of professions. The best luck we can wish her is escape into some walk in life in which gentlewomanliness is, as it were, a part of the job. It is all very well for us to exhort the man behind the desk to put all his strength into his work. The situation remains the same; small powers backed by a neat system are quite sufficient for the task he is paid to perform.

That task is a fatally simple one: to assign lessons, to hear recitations, to hold examinations, and to turn in marks. Any fair mental mechanic not incapable of keeping order can do this. It is no trick at all. Do you fancy yourself something more than mere mechanic and disciplinarian? Do you imagine yourself doing far more than you are paid to do, arousing and inspiring your pupils to greater effort than is absolutely required of them? Try it. If you are one man in a thousand you will succeed in lifting yourself by your own boot straps; two or three of your pupils may succeed in lifting themselves: you are a great teacher. But you no more earn your salary than the droning fellow in the next room, who causes his pupils to acquire facts, to retain them for purposes of examination, and to expel them accurately at a given moment. We have a beautiful theoretic ideal of education; but what, if not this, is our practical working ideal? Any system of education has its true root, not in the character of the object desired, but in the character of the object required. So long as our universities continue, year by year, to stamp the hall-mark of the educated man upon hundreds of ignorant and but semi-literate "graduates," we have no cause to wonder at what takes place on either side