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"WELL, I WOULD HAVE BEEN ENGAGED NOW IF IT WERE NOT FOR MY CHAPERON." "DID SHE INTERFERE?"

"YES; SHE BECAME ENGAGED TO HIM HERSELF."

BOOKISHMANG

SOME REMARKS ON COLD-BLOODED VILLAINS. THE trouble with fiction is that it exalts emotion as a feature of strong character. Great writers and small make you bow the knee before the man or woman who meets a crisis with a noble emotionnot just enough emotion to lead to the right action at the right moment, but what they have stereotyped into "a very flood of emotion." Somehow as a result of this idea saturating books, traditions, and school instruction, men and women begin to gauge their own characters by their capacities to "feel deeply" on certain occasions-as though there were any particular moral worth in increased heart action and a rush of blood to the head. A glass of old port, or a sufficient number of strong cigars, or a hundred yards' dash will produce the same results. You may experience through them the very similar sense of satisfaction with yourself that is produced by helping a friend out of a scrape or saving the life of your brother-that is if you are built on the emotional plan which has been approved so long as an index of character.

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But everybody isn't of that kind. There is a sprinkling of fine robust men and women who go along doing their work, and taking pleasure and duty with equanimity, and accomplishing considerable good without any particular emotional excitement on their part. These are the people who are always characterized as "cold," unsympathetic," or "self-seeking." They never get any credit for a good action because the world believes they did it for "reasons "-presumably selfish. You never hear them spoken of with enthusiasm as men and women of "character "-that term is reserved for the flashing eye, the sympathetic voice, and the good deed that is done dramatically. There is no insinuation of hypocrisy against this type of man. He is, we believe, sincere, lovable, and a force that makes for happiness. But he has been exalted too long, we venture, at the expense of his brother whose respiration is not so easily affected by what he sees or hears.

The expression cold-blooded villain" has become a truism, and there are many estimable men of equable temper who occasionally think that, as all the world believes it, they must have in themselves the capacity for unlimited villainy. They say to themselves, "If all good and great men experience such emotion, as described in the best literature, on the loss of father, mother, fortune, sweetheart-then we must be wofully lacking in the best qualities of human nature." They don't worry over it-for that is a distinguishing trait of theirs, not to "worry" themselves or anybody else. They get their reward by missing many of the accidents of life, by escaping the importunities of professional philanthropists, by not being expected to do much for their friends and relatives, and by living serenely in the midst of turmoil, and dying at the right time-for the vital machinery of such men is apt to run strong and efficiently to the last, and stop suddenly.

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NOTES.-It is curious to recall the amount of very good-work that

has been accomplished by George Mac Donald without his gaining a distinct or permanent position as a novelist. Yet you may remember after fifteen or twenty years the impression made upon you by "David Elginbrod" or "Robert Falconer." You have a vivid recollection of a weird fancy, an intense style, and strength in drawing eccentric characters. When you take the story of his old age, up The Flight

of the Shadow" (Appleton), you are conscious of hearing an echo of the old voice. It is a pleasing echo, a creditable piece of fiction-writing, with an original setting for the very old plot of the mixed identity of two brothers who look exactly alike.

"Ciphers" (Houghton), by Ellen Olney Kirk, belongs to those stories of New York" Society "which have no foundations in the real life of the city, or the most artificial life of the city. The ideas of character and life which prevail in it might even fail of recognition in a theatrical boarding-house, where most of the boarders were actors of melodrama.

PLUSH ERMINE.

Prisoner: IF YOUR HONOR PLEASE, THE OFFICER WHO ARRESTED ME IS UNWORTHY OF BELIEF. HE ACTUALLY OFFERED TO CARRY A BRIBE FROM ME TO YOUR HONOR, BUT I REFUSEDJustice O'Rourke: FOINE THAT MON TWENTY DOLLARS. Prisoner (amazed): FOR WHAT?

Justice O'Rourke: FOR CONTIMPT O' COURT, SORR.

Those who have long delighted in the delicate humor, the gentle pathos, and the exquisite art of Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford," will find great pleasure in the new Macmillan edition, with Hugh Thomson's very clever drawings, which reproduce the quaint characters and costumes of the old days. Droch.

NEW BOOKS.

ROSES OF ROMANCE. By John Keats. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Flowers of Fancy. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Poems. By Emily Dickinson. Edited by T. W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

What Woman Wouldn't? By Isabel Pallen Smith. Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry and Company.

Our Amateur Circus. Illustrated by H. McVickar. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Marie Antoinette, and The Downfall of Royalty. By Imbert de SaintAmand. Translation by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Antinous. By Abbie Carter Goodloe. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

The Flight of the Shadow. By George Mac Donald. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Monsieur Bob. By St. George Rathborne. St. Paul: The Price-McGill Company.

The Bard of the Dimbovitza. Roumanian Folk Songs. Collected by Hélèna Vacaresco. Translated by Carmen Sylva and Alma Strettell. Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

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reaches the statue, and

then you heave a sigh and try to sympathize with the proportions. If Diana were the principal stockholder, and had made herself as big as the other owners would allow, the error would be explained.

Why not box her up and ship her to the World's Fair? She is

a good girl, and would make a fine show there, but here she is on the wrong pedestal.

There are lots of inexpensive, commonplace, little, every-day finials that would do so much better. Some of the bad ones in our picture, if of the right proportion, would be infinitely better than the gigantic lady who seems to be testing the airy pedestal to its utmost endurance.

At present it is a bronze lady with a tower beneath.

It should be a tower with a finial.

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An ingenious device invented by a horse for adding to the comfort and beauty of man while exercising.

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