"The Yoke of Pity," translated from the French of Julian Benda, and published by Henry Holt and Company has the form of fiction, but it is clear that the story was written purely for the purpose of developing the author's thesis. For he seeks to prove that in an individual the highest intellectual passion cannot exist at the same time with love or pity or devotion to domestic life. The first part of the story tells how the hero loved a woman to the exclusion of every other interest for several years.

Then came the struggle of his individuality for freedom, and its assertion of its rights, despite the bondage of pity he felt for the woman he cast off. The second part finds the hero married to a marvelously sane and self-effacing woman, with whom he had the understanding that she should never intrude upon his inner life. For a time all went well under these circumstances, and his intellectual work progressed. Then the child developed incurable hip disease and the father's passion of pity for her swept away all his other interests. The "yoke of pity" this time was too much for him and he became a thoroughly domesticated man, captive and longing for his former state.

The family history seems to grow in favor as a form of fiction, and every day brings a new phalanx of kindred, including at least three generations, the individuals well differentiated, but still resembling their nearest relatives. The latest example, Mr. L. Allen Harker's "The Ffolliot's of Red Marley," has a hero whose birth and training combine to make him unpleasant to the reigning Ffolliot, almost as unpleasant as the reigning Ffolliot is to his wife and his six children, Mary,

the lovely; Grantly, the military; Uz and Buz, the twins; Ger, the liberal; and Kitten, the audacious. The hero, Eloquent Abel Gallup, the victim of his father's taste in names, and predestined from his birth to a political career, is also the victim, in one way or another, of all these children, but the author allows him to escape being in the least ridiculous, gives him a great soul, and in immense earnestness leaves him a really triumphant figure. The noteworthy feature of the story is the extreme neatness of its craftsmanship. It is terse without being abrupt, and logical without being dry, and its humor never becomes caricature. No more agreeable story could be desired either for private perusal or for social reading. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Mr. John Fox has well entitled his new story "The Heart of the Hills." for every one of its pages seems actually to pulsate with life, and as the climax approaches, the reader finds his own heart set throbbing by its mingling of young passion and the fire of hand-to-hand contest in politics, and finance, and ancient feud. The occasional glint of ironical consciousness that the conditions under which the action has proceeded are swiftly departing, and in a generation will seem incredible heightens one's pleasure, and the wildwood atmosphere in which the author revels half intoxicates the reader. It is this attribute of his work which Mr. Fox himself holds as most precious, judging by his dedication, "In grateful memory of my father who loved the great mother, her forms, her moods, her ways. To the end she left him the joy of youth in the coming of spring." From the

very beginning of his literary career, he has been as faithful to his motherearth as a Greek to the "maiden and mother of men, the sea," and his singleness of heart is a rare quality in these days when too many allow themselves to be persuaded that one place, one party, one religion is, upon the whole, as good as any other, and end by being of no value whatsoever to any place or party, and no credit to any religion. His reward is the tremendous increase of power revealed in "The Heart of the Hills." Charles Scribner's Sons.

Approbation from the late Sarah Orne Jewett was praise indeed, not easily earned or lightly bestowed, but evidently her favorable criticism of Miss Willa Sibert Cathers's early work was not won by the flattery of imitation. Miss Jewett loved to show the beauty of quiet, unpretentious souls following the trivial round, accepting the common task. Miss Cathers likes to exhibit the fine quality of a nature almost unconscious of self; living only to guide others, to save them from themselves, to compel them to conduct their fortunes wisely, incessantly active and operative to the utmost limit of its influence. Probably the traits which especially won Miss Jewett's admiration were that Miss Cathers's charity is ready to pardon all sins and that she never preaches, no matter how great the temptation. Through her novel "O Pioneers!" move a beneficent woman and a girl whose very loveliness is mischievous, and even deadly, and about them seethes the motley assemblage of European immigrants that peopled so many parts of the Nebraska of thirty years ago, and Miss Cathers makes their history a message of enlightenment, to those whose imagination has not sufficient force to perceive all that is implied in chrono

logical tables and statistics. Many an old Colony may envy the young State its chronicler in fiction. Houghton Mifflin Company.

The peculiar attractiveness of Mr. Arnold Bennett's "The Old Adam" is its perfect symbolic presentation of all varieties of the music-box, from the now aged pioneers, contemporary with the daguerreotype to the latest and hugest machines which, once started, repeat yards, miles, leagues of dialogue, monologue, or collective speech, regularly punctuated with clicks, and when silence seems inevitable, begin anew, until the magic roll of paper comes to an end leaving the auditor profoundly content to hear nothing at all. Mr. Bennett takes Mr. Edward Henry Machin to London at the age of forty-three and a half years, after he has made £341 by a stock speculation, and sets him to spend his unearned wealth. He is as helpless as any part of a piece of mechanism and is passed through endless changes as to clothes, food, and occupation, always on the point of stopping but ever clicking and continuing. Sybarite, theatre-owner, stage-manager, patron of actresses, partner of actor-managers, at regular intervals on the verge of ruin, always triumphing, he astonishes everybody but Robert, his son and heir, who ends the last chapter as he begins the first, by inquiring, "Isn't Father a funny man?" He is nothing less, and both his newest set of acquaintances and those who knew him when he was only "Denry" will find him equally funny. One mentally laments that Mr. Bennett does not produce something more natural, but does one close the book? Not until one arrives at Robert's last question. Thus does Mr. Bennett shape his readers' taste, and they would not have him change. George H. Doran Company.