knowledge necessary to enable them to do this work for themselves; (3) he pays the printer for the composition and the presswork; (4) he pays the binder for binding the book; and (5) he maintains a staff of persons whose duty it is to draft and place advertising, to distribute the book to the press, to sell it and ship it to the purchasers, to keep accounts, and to promote in general the interests of the author. It stands to reason that if a publisher has to do all this he can not afford to enter into a contract that shall guarantee the author a large royalty. Not many years ago 10 per cent was the amount of royalty almost invariably paid to authors by publishers, and then authors were glad to accept it. There were fewer authors then, and most of the books published were successes. But times have changed; to-day their name is legion, and their demands often absurdly extravagant."

Radiant Motherhood. By Margaret E. Sangster. Cloth. Pp. 374. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THIS is one of the most sane and helpful books ever written for mothers, fathers and

all who love children and the home. We do not agree with all that the gifted author says, especially in regard to the rejuvenating influence of frequent child-birth on the mother. Our observation leads us to believe that while two or three children may not over-tax the reserve power of the American woman, more than this number of offspring tends to age the mother prematurely and not unfrequently undermines and destroys her health. There are also several passages that remind us of the remark of an old lady who after listening to a spread-eagle eulogy on the prosperity of our nation under the trust-fostering tariff, turned to us when the speaker sat down and said: "All that he said is very beautiful, but it is not true." So when we read in the following paragraph the way Madonna-like motherhood is now regarded the world over, we feel much as did our shrewd friend about the blessings of the tariff:

"She is the central figure of our modern life, the queen regnant of every home. This, not alone in what we call civilized lands. The mother rules in the tepee of the red man, in the harem of the Turk, in the zenana of the Hindu, in the flower-wreathed homes of Japan. Everywhere the mother is queen, in the palace, in the hut."

The Twentieth-Century Child. By Edward Cooper, author of Wyemarke and the Sea Fairies. Pp. 311. Price, $1.50. New York: John Lane.

MR. COOPER has evidently not made any effort to produce either a grim or a scientific book; he merely discourses pleasantly about children, among whom he has met some relittle eleven-year-old lady who spends her time markable personalities as, for instance, the astonishing her hearers with her performances on the piano, and attending late teas. book adds little to one's knowledge of children, but is marked by a deep love of small people.

The

The most important chapter is that in which he formulates a demand for deputy-mothers to take the place of those women to whom the care of children is either irksome or exhausting. He points out that there are to-day thousands of highly-cultivated women who are neither hard nor indifferent, and yet who do not wish to spend their lives in the nursery. That such a demand should be voiced between the covers of a respectable English book is a sign of the times-these peculiar times in which it is actually admitted that the last word has not been said about the mother business.

It is the only radical touch in the entire book, and even this is couched in such discreet language that only those who have ears to hear will discover the message. E. L. POMEROY.

The Wall-Street Point-of-View. By Henry Clews. Cloth. Pp. 290. New York: Silver. Burdett & Company.

IN THIS Work Mr. Henry Clews gives the world a brief for Wall street and the privileged classes that seek to become the dominating and ruling influences in government and business life, the element that is to-day working in devious and often indefensible ways to become the master-class in an imperial republic

that has far more affinity for a limited monarchy than a true democracy. The author frankly admits that his point-of-view is that of Wall street, but he would have us imagine Wall street to be the fountain-head of all that is best in our political as well as business life. His eulogy of Wall street, coming at the present time when the corrupt and immoral practices of the great master-spirits of the street-the pillars, indeed, of the Wall-street world-have been laid bare in the sworn testimony brought out before investigating committees as well as in the various scandals that have smirched the business annals of the New World during recent years, is well calculated to arouse the cynical risibilities of the Street no less than the indignation of friends of justice, high ethics and the fundamental principles of true democracy.

Mr. Clews is nothing if not an apostle of privileged interests. He glorifies Wall street. He denounces Jackson for throttling the great banking-trust that was corrupting the government of his day. Our present banking system, based on privilege and so intimately associated with the wholesale gambling of the Wall-street high financiers and the corrupt practices of the great corporate magnates, calls forth the most enthusiastic praise. He bows in adoration at the shrine of high protection. Indeed, wherever there are groups of men or a class becoming immensely rich through special privileges, there we are sure to find Mr. Clews dancing attendance and voluble in praise. He and his work are wholly out of touch or sympathy with the foundation principles of democratic government. The work is worthless to sincere friends of repub

lican institutions because he has been so intimately associated for so long a time with the ethics of Wall street and has so long been accustomed to looking through the spectacles of privileged interests that apparently he has lost the power to appreciate the meaning of democracy. The world in which he has lived and his point-of-view naturally lead him to indulge in the most vicious species of demagoguery and special-pleading when he attacks views he fears. This is constantly apparent throughout the book, but nowhere more marked than in his chapter entitled "The Physical Force Annihilators," in which he brings together in the same general discussion schools of thought as far removed as are the poles and the ethics, philosophy and methods of which are as unlike as are darkness and light. Here

he groups socialists, nihilists, anarchists and communists all together in such a way as to leave on the mind of the superficial or hasty reader the impression that the socialists are seeking a bloody revolution. True, he modifies his statements from time to time, but the general effect of his discussion and his linking the opposing schools together are calculated to arouse a deadly, unreasoning prejudice in the minds of his readers against all the schools he attacks. To place the socialists with the anarchists and nihilists is cowardly, contemptible and misleading, and the purpose of the whole chapter seems to us to be, not to enlighten the reader, but to injure socialism, which he fears, by linking it with schools of thought that are in direct opposition in philosophy, in teaching and in methods of action.

The book will doubtless please the narrowminded beneficiaries of special privilege and reaction, who at heart have no more love for democracy or a truly free government than did the Tories of the days of the Revolution.

The Balanced Life. By Clarence Lathbury. Cloth. Pp. 264. Price, $1.00. Philadelphia: The Nunc Licet Press.

THIS is one of the best recent works which by stimulating the inner life and impressing seek to strengthen and round out character

on the mind in a realizing sense the omnipotence and omnipresence of Good. The author's style is clear. He makes his thought easily understood, though he is somewhat redundant at times, the fault that it seems to us is present in the writings of most of those New Thought. Barring this defect the style who represent what is commonly termed the

is on the whole excellent and the thought wellcalculated to strengthen, purify and upbuild the character of the reader. Some idea of the writer's style and thought may be gained from the following brief quotation:

"While the body has an unquestioned influence on the spirit, we know it is the spirit which is master, and is that which produces and controls the body. Everywhere and with everything it is a law that the inner creates the outer. The hidden life of the seed builds the structural pansy or nettle according to its secret quality. The plant is an expositor of the chemicals within its stem. Nevertheless, this interior power may be hampered or spoiled by mutilation of the roots or leaves. Life is coöperative or interdependent, the

within and the without playing upon and modifying one another. Yet we must cling to the fact that the essential is the inner, for without it there could be nothing at all. There must be melody in the soul before song is possible and yet a defective larynx would prohibit the divinest expression. In the heart of the nut lie coiled beauty and majesty, then the heart of the oak and arms that clasp the skies. First, essential spiritual life; then the human form divine.”

The Balanced Life is a book that will make for a better manhood.

Shakespeare's Sweetheart. By Sara Hawks Sterling. Illustrated in color by Clara Elsene Peck. Cloth. Pp. 282. Price, $2.00 net. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company.

THIS is the love-story of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, purporting to be written by Anne herself, after her husband's death, at the solicitation of Ben Jonson, who lays the manuscript away in a vault in London where it has recently been discovered. The story is beautifully written in quaint and charming language and introduces many of the incidents and phrases which occur in Shakespeare's plays. In it also we catch glimpses of Marlowe, Greene, Burbadge and other player-folk of the time. The author has very much idealized the characters of both Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, but she has succeeded in writing a most delightful tale which has been handsomely brought out by the publishers. The volume is illustrated in colors, with profuse marginal decorations and will make a beautiful and acceptable Christmas gift.

AMY C. RICH.

That Reminds Me. Cloth. Pp. 230. Price, 75 cents net. By mail, 83 cents. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company.

THIS is a little volume of very bright stories which originally appeared in the columns of the Philadelphia Times and the Public Ledger and which were called out by the offer of premiums for the best jests for the columns entitled "Tales Worth Telling." The work contains over two hundred brief, pointed, humorous anecdotes, many of them exceptionally bright and all worth the reading. It is a little book that should prove very popular, not merely for the entertainment to be derived

from its pages, but because there are times when all persons wish to have in mind some bright stories that are apropos and worth relating.

Wit and Humor of the American Bar. Cloth. Pp. 238. Price, 80 cents net. By mail, 85 cents. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company.

THE LATEST addition to George W. Jacobs' admirable series of vest-pocket books on wit and humor deals with the Wit and Humor of the American Bar. Books of this character may or may not be worth the while. Here if anywhere it is essential that there be discriminating judgment and a keen sense of humor on the part of the editor. Fortunately this volume is edited with rare judgment, and as a result we find in it a rich fund of capital anecdotes at once humorous and entertaining; just such stories as bright people, whether lawyers, public speakers, toast-masters or those who are constantly mingling with their fellowmen in a social way, will wish to be familiar with.

Hearts' Haven. By Katharine Evans Blake. Illustrated with six drawings in color. Cloth. Pp. 496. Price, $1.50. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Hearts' Haven is a stirring romance, rich in lights and shadows, full of human interest and possessing the peculiar charm of new scenes and surroundings; for here the reader is taken into a field hitherto unexplored by the writer of fiction and brought en rapport with the strange life of one of the most remarkable of the many religious communal colonies that have flourished for a season from time to time since the Revolutionary period. The story is a love romance, the scenes of which are laid in the religious community founded by the German mystic, idealist and enthusiast George Rapp, who led his band of faithful followers from Germany to Pennsylvania. Here Father Rapp conceived the idea of abolishing marriage. If these devoted people had not been the unconscious victims of that most powerful of all psychic influences—the sway of religious suggestion, set in action by the leader and master-mind of the community but resultant largely from the enthusiasm and auto-suggestion of the members themselves, this attempt would not have succeeded, for

the Germans are a home-loving people and the bond of matrimony is very precious to them. Moreover, they are at once rationalists and idealists, and their rationalism leads them instinctively to feel that it is perilous to fly in the face of nature's great fundamental laws. Still, history teaches no fact more clearly than that religious fanaticism will bear a people to any lengths, often transforming them into the likeness of the most ferocious beasts. as witnessed in the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition and other master-spirits in the long night of persecution, hatred and intolerant bigotry that followed the Reformation. The Rappists, as they were called, hesitated for a little time but finally, almost all of them made what to them was the great renunciation. It is at this point that our author begins to weave the fabric of her romance.

The struggle of a noble woman to hold her husband's love and to retain the care of their child, the taking of the babe from her and her attempt to destroy the paramount prompting of a loving nature and to stifle the natural yearnings of her heart by indulging in religious ecstasy, only to find her whole soul calling more loudly than ever for the love of her husband, are described with such touching fidelity as to reveal deep human insight on the part of the author. Next we come to the tragic death of the mother and the shadow that henceforth falls over the father's life. These things form the prelude of the tale in which the babe Hugh becomes the hero and the infant daughter of a Southern gentleman who dies in southern Indiana, near the Rappist settlement of Harmony, becomes the heroine; for from Pennsylvania the scenes have shifted to New Harmony, Indiana, where Mr. Rapp had established a wonderful community, with its great temple, its labyrinth, its granaries, its mills for grinding grain and its factories for weaving cloth. Here the community prospered in a financial way, but here again trouble came, largely through the children coming to maturity and feeling the powerful attraction of sex instincts. The growth of love in the children, Hugh and Trillis, is told in a simple, powerful yet delicate manner. The struggle of the two to be faithful to the tenets held sacred in the only world they knew, while nature advanced her imperious claim, is splendidly described. But finally love triumphs. They fly from the community to get married. They meet a Methodist circuit-rider who cheerfully weds them, but Father Rapp overtakes the fugitives

and by the power of his will beats down their opposition. They return to the community. Hugh is sent to Heidelberg to perfect his education, and Trillis becomes a mother. From thenceforth the story grows in power and in compelling interest over the reader's imagination. There is also the mystery of a theft, with its dark shadow falling athwart two lives, and there are the fate and the future of many other members of the community in whom the reader becomes deeply interested, besides the central figures whose struggles typify the battle of tens of thousands of misguided enthusiasts whose blasted lives have shadowed the pages of history-lives wasted through mistaken belief in religious tenets that oppose the great fundamental law of nature. Happily fortune is more kind to Hugh and Trillis than she has been to the thousands who have renounced home, love and life's sweetest fruition in the hope of saving their souls from the wrath of an angry God, for Hugh, Trillis and the beautiful baby Helen come together in a glad reunion as the curtain is rung down.

As an artistic romance of love, sacrifice and noble endeavor this work of a new and gifted author claims serious attention. As a remarkably faithful picture of the life and the beliefs of one of the most interesting religious communities, the work is of historical value. But its greatest excellence lies beyond these things. Here is evidenced the imagination of the true artist-the imagination of the creator who comes into perfect rapport with the lives of the characters depicted, so as to faithfully reflect the thought, aspirations and dreams, the heroisms and weaknesses, the lofty flights and the mental and spiritual limitations that mark strong individualities. This excellence of the work is especially noticeable, because the characters are widely divergent, and some are exceptional in nature; yet they are all drawn with remarkable fidelity. Take, for example, the character of Father George Rapp, in many respects the foremost personage in the book. Our author makes us see and feel the high religious fervor, enthusiasm and ecstasy that in their extremes lead to fatal mistakes, but the purity of purpose, the lofty idealism and the austere moral rectitude of the man lift him to the peerage of religious leaders; and so admirably is he drawn that we see the man, and even if we do not come under the sway of his mysticism, we understand his acts, seeing them as we do from his view-point. As far removed as the

poles is the remarkably fine creation of the lusty, worldly Brother Hanno, whose character is in its way almost as notable a creation as that of Father Rapp. So, too, are the characterizations of Hugh and Trillis, Brother Laurence and Count Theodor, and in less marked degree those of other prominent personages. All the characters delineated show the presence of the imaginative quality essential to great work in fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, and, indeed, all phases of creative labor.

Another excellence of this work is the remarkable knowledge of psychology displayed. This may be intuitive or it may be in part the fruit of study and observation, but certain it is that seldom have the inner struggles of human minds been more faithfully depicted or the power of mind battling with mind and of religious dogmas, vagaries and dreams battling with the imperious promptings of nature been more faithfully imaged than in Hearts' Haven. These things give a special interest and value to the otherwise charming romance of an author who promises to take a prominent place among our American novelists.

Tancred. By Benjamin Disraeli. Edited by Bernard N. Langdon-Davies, M.A. Cloth. Pp. 584. Boston: L. C. Page & Company. PEOPLE to-day are apt to think of Benjamin Disraeli only as a statesman, forgetting that he was also an author of far more than ordinary ability and that he wrote a remarkable series of novels portraying as did no other writer of his time certain phases of the political and social life of England during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In many of these works he had no definite purpose in view, but in Vivian Grey, Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred he set forth the ideals and aspirations of Young England, that small party prominent for a brief period in the political life of England prior to the repeal of the Corn Laws and whose objects have been briefly summarized by a recent critic as follows:

"To make more effective the power of the Crown after the Parliamentary reforms of

1832; to remove the Church. in so far as concerned purely spiritual matters, from Parliamentary dictation; to decentralize authority to local bodies, and to improve the condition of the laboring classes."

bringing about better relations between the propertied class and the laboring class. Young England held that "Property has its duties as well as its rights"; that "Labor has its rights as well as its duties."

Vivian Grey was a keen satire on prominent personages in political life. Coningsby expressed the social and political views of the author. Sybil gave a graphic description of the condition of the working-class in England. Tancred, the last and in many respects the greatest of these four novels, was Disraeli's favorite. It is the story of the life of an idealistic dreamer who aims at the regeneration of the West through the restoration of faith. He journeys to Palestine, seeking that inspiration which has guided the Chosen People of old and which he believes dwells in that land of poetry and mystery, an inspiration which he fondly hopes may some day come to him, enabling him to guide his life into the channels of greatest usefulness to his nation. The book impresses strongly the idea of the power of the individual and insists upon the necessity for individual faith. As literature it ranks high. The descriptions of the Orient are wonderfully beautiful. Someone has said that Disraeli is the only writer who has poetically as well as graphically described the East.

These four volumes recently brought out by Messrs. L. C. Page & Company are admirably gotten up and will prove an important addition to the libraries of all cultured people who do not already possess these works of the great statesman. AMY C. RICH.