In

presence of injustice, social evils or tyranny under the folds of our flag, for the betterment of the condition of the unfortunates. Hawaii she was instrumental in achieving a great victory for civilization by compelling the liberation of over five hundred women kept for immoral purposes by a conscienceless band of greed-crazed and over-rich representatives of the imperial republic.

The Samoan islands are interestingly_described, as are the Australian states and Tasmania, that little island gem, once the home of convicts, now one of the most prosperous, flourishing and progressive of the little island states of the world. But the chief interest of this portion of the volume lies in the chapters devoted to New Zealand and her ideal government. Mrs. Gougar traversed the island from north to south, making a painstaking study of the conditions of all the people and the practical operation of the government innovations that have challenged the attention of the world. Her conclusions are in alignment with those arrived at by Professor Parsons in his luminous Story of New Zealand. So interesting, concise and valuable is this summary that we reproduce a large portion of it:

New Zealand, our author holds, "rightfully boasts that hers is a 'Government of Divine Justice,' where 'the welfare of each is the concern of all.'

"She has universal suffrage.

"Progressive taxation of land values and incomes, with exemption of improvements and small incomes.

'Government loans at low rate of interest. “Government management of the principal banks of issue.

"Nationalization of credit.

"Referendum on local land-value tax and on the license question. This latter has driven the liquor traffic well out of the island, but two provinces permitting the sale, and it is believed these will soon be brought under the ban of prohibition. This is attributed directly to the influence of the woman's ballot.

"There are wise labor laws relating to factory, shop, mining, truck, and wages. Girls and boys, no matter how young, if regularly employed, must be paid not less than one dollar per week for their services. This prevents the pernicious system of apprenticeship, where the young are employed without compensation, to be discharged when worthy of good wages, that others may serve without expense to the employer.

"There is the eight-hour, half-holidays, seats for shop girls, ventilation, safety, and no sweat-shops.

"Direct employment instead of the contract system in public works; the minimum wage paid by the government, $1.75 per day.

"Industrial arbitration has practically abolished strikes and lock-outs.

"There are state annuities for the aged poor.

"I give a summary," she observes, "of the most progressive and beneficial legislation:

"Land management consists in resumption and division of large estates, and limitations of the area one man may hold. . . . Gradual nationalization of the soil is an established policy, the 999 years' lease taking the place of private ownership. Suburban homes for workingmen at low rents, money advances to assist men in opening up farms and securing homes.

"Postal service includes parcels-post, postal savings-banks, telegraphs and title registration. She has national railways, telephones, waterworks, and state ownership of coal-fields. State railways are operated for service instead of profit, so at certain hours in the day schoolchildren, workingmen and farmers are carried free.

torney in the settlement and management of property of decedents; it draws up wills, deeds, manages estates for widows and minor children, and if parties are going abroad the public trustee will take charge of their affairs.

"The state is responsible for the conduct of the trustee and his numerous agents, and his office is administered with honor and ability. It is difficult to comprehend the great benefit to the people that this wise provision has been since its adoption.

"Government life insurance, as practiced in New Zealand, should become the policy of the United States, and I believe it will as soon as the attention of the people is turned to it and they understand it. New Zealand insures her own people, though private corporations have liberty to do business in the country. The experiment has been popular from the first. By the last report it has 42,570 policies,

covering $51,000,000 insurance, against the New York Life and Equitable with less than 900 policies, after more than twelve years in the colony. The people prefer the government insurance because of its safety-it has the guarantee of the government behind it— because of its cheapness, the rates being lower than in private companies; because it is free from all oppressive conditions. The premiums must be paid, and the insured must not commit suicide under six months from the time he becomes insured. The policy is world wide, and the insured may go where he wills. If a man fails to pay his premium when it is due, he does not lose his insurance. The government pays the premium out of the surrender value of the policy, and does this until such value is exhausted. It has many other ways of helping an honest, struggling policyholder to make this provision safe for his family. Insurance is coöperative. The profits of the office go to the insured. Every three years the profits are divided up among the policy-holders. There have been five divisions, and $35,000,000, the profits accruing from loaning and investing insurance money, have gone back into the pockets of the insured, instead of going to private corporations to make millionaires, as in the United States and other countries, which millionaires, in turn, use the vast sums to organize trusts, through which they further oppress the people. While we legislate to make millionaires, New Zealand legislates to make the masses comfortable by leaving in the hands of the toiler the results of his own toil.

"It is conceded that the department is free from spoils and is well managed by the experts who have made the institution a complete success. I became an enthusiastic advocate of this form of insurance when I understood its safety and justice and informed myself of its practical value in this interesting country.

Education is free and compulsory. There are fewer illiterates than in England, Germany, France or the United States. It is claimed that all whites over twelve years of age can read and write. The best exponent of the English language in New Zealand is a native Maori. "The government has been, and is, most just to its dusky natives.

"There is a lower percentage of criminals or drunkards than in any other country.

"New Zealand is the only country on the globe where I have met no beggars.

"There is a higher average of wealth, per capita, than in any other country, and a larger percentage of the population own their homes than in any other land.

"There are no slums in her cities.

"There are no political bosses, and political corruption is unknown. Premier Seddon says: 'My government is as pure as the falling snow.' I asked men, who had dealings with the government such as furnishing equipments for railways, if it was necessary to tickle the palms of officers with bribe-money in order to do business, and it was the universal testimony that an attempt to bribe an official would defeat dealings with him. There is not a tramp in the country, and millionaires are not wanted nor respected.

"Organized labor is especially strong and influential in New Zealand, and to this and woman suffrage the progress of the country in laws is largely due. Labor unions must incorporate before the government will recognize their demands. This makes the organization responsible for any damage should strikes occur.

"State ownership and management of coalfields have brought great relief to the people, and prevent exorbitant prices for this necessity. The result of the experiments in government in New Zealand is to establish a true democracy. Physically and politically New Zealand is fit for man in his best estate, and she stands boldly out among the countries of the earth as an example of divine justice in government, under the honorable name of Christian Socialism.

"Hers is a government, not of Paternalism, but of Fraternalism, in which every citizen is a member of the great corporation, where the strong protect the weak, and where, in practice as well as in theory, the welfare of each is the concern of all.

"The same principles applied to 1,000,000 people will bring the same results if applied to 85,000,000, and many problems now asking solution at the hands of the people of the United States can be solved by following the teachings of this practical republic in the Southern Seas.

"We bade adieu to New Zealand, enthusiastic over her resources, beauty, grandeur, gentle people, and just government."

This volume will not prove disappointing, and we can heartily and conscientiously recommend it to our readers.

Daughters of the Puritans. By Seth Curtis Beach. Cloth. Pp. 286. Price, $1.10 net. Boston: American Unitarian Association.

WE THINK it is not too much to say that this is the best volume of brief biographies of the past year. It contains short yet very graphic and informing life-sketches of seven eminent daughters of New England-seven of those fine, true lives that morally, even more than mentally, enriched civilization. Here we have an outline picture of the immense and civilization-wide work for humanity wrought by that noble, practicable and indefatigable toiler for humanity, Dorothea Lynde Dix-that angel of light to the insane of the world. And here is the story of that other moral heroine, Lydia Maria Child, who dared and did so much for the freedom of the black man, and whose broad thought contributed in no small degree to the more tolerant, charitable and reason-cultivating attitude of the American mind, and especially of the mind of New England in the field of religious thought. Here, too, is the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who with fiction did as much as Garrison with his editorial pen and Henry Ward Beecher in his pulpit to sting out of its comfortable and profitable lethargy the conscience of the North.

And companioning these high, fine, positive and more or less aggressive writers and workers in the larger field of human service we have the life-story of Louisa May Alcott, Mary Lovell Ware, Miss Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Each life has its message, and most of them form a brilliant record of consecration to exalted idealism and devotion to humanity's weal. Each life was victorious in the high sense of the word, because, from childhood till the evening shadows fell, the character in every instance gradually and splendidly unfolded into noble and still nobler proportions.

Mr. Beach has succeeded in a far greater degree than most biographers in revealing the soul or the true personality of his subjects by faithful study of the life, the letters and utterances, and by seizing only those things that are germane to the life in hand. He has told *Books intended for review in THE ARENA should be addressed to B. O. Flower, Editorial Department, THE ARENA, Boston, Mass.

his stories entertainingly and in such a manner as to bring the reader into the most intimate and sympathetic relations with his subjects. This is a rare gift which transforms biography from a dull, dry, and often profitless form of literature into something at once absorbingly interesting and of the highest possible value to the human mind. No one can read these lives without being renewed in spirit, and for young women we know of no works so instinct with spiritual virility or so potential for good as the Daughters of the Puritans.

The Boys' Life of Christ. By William B. Forbush. Illustrated. Cloth. Pp. 318. Price, $1.25 net. New York: The Funk & Wagnalls Company.

THE AUTHOR of this work has written one of the most fascinating stories for the young, apart from all consideration of the subject, that we have read in years. As an orthodox Christian, his view-point is of course different from that of liberal thinkers who regard the Great Nazarene rather as the perfected flower on the human stem than as incarnate Deity. But his story is very different from that of most orthodox writers in that he entirely passes over the alleged miraculous conception of Jesus and begins the life when the child is twelve years old. Moreover, this life deals chiefly with Jesus the man, for as the author says in his preface: "The miraculous is not emphasized because it is more helpful to boys to think of how Jesus resembles themselves than how much he differs from them."

The book is the fruit of exhaustive research and deep study. The atmosphere of Palestine in the time of Jesus; the physical characteristics of the land; the customs and habits, the labors and pastimes, the dress and general appearance of the people, are reproduced with such charm and seeming reality that the volume becomes in the highest sense realistic, because the author makes us feel and understand the life and times of Jesus even to a greater degree than have most of the masterminds who have written for adult readers.

Broad-minded orthodox Christians will receive this book with enthusiasm, and for lib. erals who may not sympathize with the au

thor's theological views, it will nevertheless hold a peculiar charm, owing to the high and attractive idealism that pervades its pages and its beauty of style and fidelity to the general life and conditions that environed the incomparable Prophet of Nazareth.

Tales From Dickens. By Hallie Erminie Rives. Illustrated. Cloth. Pp. 474. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THESE tales are prefaced by an excellent short sketch of the life of Charles Dickens. In the fifteen chapters that follow the biographical sketch the author has told in pleasing and interesting manner tales from the master-novelist's great romances. The book is admirably adapted for young people and will serve to interest them in the world of Dickens. Of course, for older heads that have come under the witchery of Dickens, these tales will hold no charm. If the mature reader would enjoy Dickens he must read Dickens; but to children or youthful persons not acquainted with the marvelous stories of England's greatest novelist this book will appeal and will lead them to read the master whose genius wrought so great a work for the betterment of the condition of the poor and the unfortunate of England.

Seffy. By John Luther Long. Illustrated in colors. Cloth. Pp. 144. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THIS is a story instinct with human interest. It illustrates the fact that love is the same among all classes and conditions of men. The lovers here depicted are representatives of the rather illiterate rural population of Maryland. The central figure, a most strongly drawn character, is a Pennsylvania German with sordid instincts-so sordid, indeed, in the opening scenes that the humor of words and situations fails altogether to dissipate the feeling of repulsion experienced by the reader in the presence of young love, than which nothing in life should be more sacred. The bashful and discomfited lover; the high-tempered and high-spirited heroine who marries a drunken clerk out of pique and spite and bitterly suffers for the grave mistake; the terrible blow dealt by the irate father that all but kills the son who by failing to secure the heroine has lost for a time to the Baumgarten family the coveted meadow-land; the disappearance of the

boy; the passing of the night-time for the heroine with the death of her dissipated husband; the strong tie that draws into the sympathetic and affectionate relation of father and daughter the old German and the heroine; and the ripening and developing of their simple lives under the rod of affliction, together with the sunburst of happiness, the great joy-enwrapped calm of the closing pages, all these go to make up a charming book, despite the sordid and rather coarse phases of life that are especially emphasized in the early chapters.

Hearts and Masks. By Harold MacGrath. Illustrated. Cloth. Pp. 188. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

BRIGHT and light are the words that best characterize Mr. MacGrath's new mystery tale, Hearts and Masks. It is thoroughly artificial and as improbable as are most of the present-day mystery tales; but it is told in this writer's best vein and is therefore bright, witty and exciting for those who can become interested in tales wanting in elements of reality and probability.

The story recounts the stirring adventures of a young man and a very beautiful young woman, who though strangers at the opening of the fateful evening, are very well acquainted before the night is over, having been, through series of exciting adventures which promised a whimsical fate, thrown together during a at one time to land both of them in prison. The scenes of most of the episodes are at a fashionable masked-ball given by a huntsman's club in a suburban New Jersey town, at which the leading characters and the villain of the story appear without invitation or through indirection or subterfuge.

The tale is not so good a story as The Man on the Box, but it will doubtless prove almost as popular, as it is the kind of literature well calculated to prove diverting and restful to men and women under the pressure of modern strenuous life, who from time to time turn to light and artificial tales as they seek the musical comedies now so much in vogue.

A Little Garden Calendar. By Albert Bigelow Paine. Illustrated. Cloth. Pp. 330. Price, $1.00. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Com

pany.

THIS IS one of the best children's books of