Published every Thursday. $5.00 a year in advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year, extra. Single copies, 10 cents Back numbers can be had by applying at this office. Single copies of Vols. I. and II. out of print. Vol. I., bound, $30.00; Vol. II., bound, $15.00. Back numbers, one year old, 25 cents per copy. Vols. III. to XVI., inclusive, bound or in flat numbers, at $10.00 per volume. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. OME ONE was saying the other day that SOME apart from transitory considerations of pulchritude, politics and crime, the most interesting American to meet in the street was Ben Butler. Ben's chief rivals, as named, in the public eye were Grover Cleveland, John Sullivan and Mrs. Cleveland. To these Edison should be added, and a place should be made, too, for Jay Gould. To the average American it is an event to clap eyes on any one of these notables, and in the cases of Gen. Butler and Mr. Gould there is the additional spice of excitement that you never can be sure that the precise moment at which you are looking at either of them, will not happen to be the one in which The Old Boy will come to carry him off. There has been no dispute worth mentioning for twenty years past that some day the Devil would come for Mr. Gould, and the very unanimity with which that opinion has been held, makes it seem irregular for such divines as Dr. Rainsford and Dr. Parkhurst to raise such a din about his ears before his time. It takes more than the reverend clergy to hurry Old Scratch. If he seems unduly slothful about gathering in Mr. Gould, it may be because when he does come millionairing again he means to make a day's work of it, and make up a bag of Mr. G., Mr. John A. Morris and the two Mr. Rockefellers. It is true, though, that the latter gentlemen are understood to believe that the commercial institution with which they are connected can drain the infernal regions of fuel, so that they fear no worse form of future retribution than cold feet. is at all good at it, and brings especially wholesome variety into the newspaper business and the preaching of the gospel. Moreover, when a man is thumping some one he has the appearance of being very actively employed, and of giving full measure of service for his wage. Of course that isn't the reason why these reverend gentlemen have been after Mr. Gould, but it may help Mr. Gould to feel benevolently towards them if he can remember that though they may not seem to have done him any particular good, he has been incidentally of some service to them. HE spring has come; not with much of a rush yet, but perceptibly. The blizzard period has passed, robins have been seen in Central Park, and the late Mr. Barnum's show is present. But if anybody has doubts about the season, and hasn't time to go robinhunting in the Park, he has only to read the steamer-lists in the daily newspapers. The migration of the top swells is in full swing already. A person whose health one autumn gave him a sufficient excuse for spending a sudden six weeks in Europe, records that when the anniversary of his departure came around, he was seized with a longing to handle five pound notes, so that for days his mind ran on British money, and nothing but a humorous self-respect kept him from converting some of Uncle Sam's legal-tender into Bank of England paper to carry in his pocket. Such is the community of human feeling that what comes into any man's mind comes also into the mind of his fellow, so that periodical recurrence of a propensity toward five pound notes (here for the first time recorded) is probably a very ordinary symptom of the habit of foreign travel. It begins to be epidemic just about now. IT is a melancholy duty to notice the existence of a lively difference between Professors Abbott and Royce of Harvard University, who are unable to agree upon certain points of philosophy and have noised abroad their disagreement with notable virulence. It is suggested hereby that these learned gentlemen should settle their differences at a distance of twelve paces, and that the weapons be books. In case there is any trouble in finding a sufficient supply of literary missiles, it may be said that Uncle Samuel has stored in the basement of his capitol at Washington, at least a million dollars' worth of bound reports which are admirably fit for one angry man to throw at another, since they are not, and never were, good for anything else. * ENATOR HILL has been south for his political health. It is suspected that the Senator got a chill about the time of the unseasonable mid-winter convention. A WOULD-BE facetious correspondent inquires, "What relation is vinegar to its mother? Horatio, that a champagne cork is to its pop, Just the same, LET'S "I TELL YER WHAT, JIMMY, DIS IS A PICNIC, DIS IS. GIT HIM ON DE SLED AN' DRAG HIM DOWN TO DE SIXT', AN' LET DE BOYS HAVE A LITTLE FUN WID HIM!" BOOKISHINE A MODERN DUTCH NOVEL. EDMUND GOSSE introduces to the English public the first of a series of "Holland Fiction" which is to represent the younger Dutch school who call themselves Sensitivists. They avowedly endeavor to combine what is best in the French schools of Impressionism and Realism, and are akin to the Symbolists of France, though they do not follow them in the search for a strange phraseology. This school, Mr. Gosse says, "selects and refines, it re-embraces Fancy that maiden so rudely turned out of house and home by the naturalists; it aims in fact at retaining the best, and nothing but the best, of the experiments of the French during the last quarter of a century." There is nothing unusual in that aim—indeed the fiction writers of most other countries have been trying to absorb just those things from French writers in the past decade. It is a difficult contract, and no wonder the Dutchmen have found the need of a band of younger men and a new name to carry it through. That is exactly why other countries are likely to remain inferior to France in this and other arts; instead of developing their natural artistic tendencies to the highest point, they imitate the methods of an alien nation. Imagine a band of young French writers solemnly resolving to absorb what is best from the prevailing school of English fiction! In the first novel of this series, "Eline Vere" (Appleton), by Louis Couperus, there are many indications of a subtle, analytic mind, which is determined at any hazard to present all the facts which may throw light on the characters of the story. These are put before the reader with a perfect obliteration of the author's personality. He is merely a convex lens to focus the rays of light; in proportion as the lens is achromatic is its value estimated as an artistic instrument. More and more has the author of advanced schools become an instrument and not a personality. It is almost impossible to arrive at those beliefs, prejudices, and sentiments which constitute his personality; so that the old attitude of affection or hatred which the reader had for an author is dying out. You now admire a clever writer as you would a carefully adiusted telescope or microscope, and that is the end of your interest in him. то " return to "Eline Vere," it offers a study of the same theme which George Moore has so admirably elaborated in Vain Fortune" (recently reviewed in this column). Each has for its central character an hysterical girl, brought up in moderate luxury, and with leisure enough to feed on her own fancies. Both authors show them as attractive, lovable girls at first with just a hint of that intense emotionalism which is the sure index of their malady (which the author of "Eline Vere" calls the peculiar malady of the end of the century). Step by step they are developed by love and jealousy and caprice, until each reaches the same solution of the trouble by suicide. In the Dutch novel there is a truly national elaboration of needless details which obscures the completeness of Eline's portrait until you have finished the book, and look at it in retrospect. Then you see how gradually and artistically the general effect has been produced. It is not a pleasant book, but it is almost free from the offensive pathology of the realists. Eline reveals her curious nature through conversations with the various characters. This dialogue is, for the most part, very well made the talk being simple, natural, and very expressive. There is a number of other characters in the story who are lightly sketched, and rather vague; and there are superfluous episodes concerning them which have no connection with the central motive of the story, and which retard it annoyingly. Some of them however reveal pleasant pictures of social life at The Hague, and indicate what the author might do if he studied his country with his own eyes, instead of through French spectacles. Droch. 101 HIC. НАЕС. Cigarette Pap.rs. By Joseph Hatton. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. The Adventuress. By Charles Aubert. Chicago: The Bow-Knot Publishing Company. The Lovers Year Book of Poetry. By Horace Paxa Chandle:. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Pastels of Men. By Paul Bourget. Translation by Katharine Prescott Wormely. Boston: Wells of English. By Isaac Bassett Choate. Boston: Roberts Brothers. D. Appleton and Company. A Little Comedy of Errors. By S. S. Morton. St. Paul: The Price-McGill Company. Roberts Thinips DUNK HOC |