The inevitable revelation of the change follows when matters come to such a pass that Loder has to confess. According to the canons of fiction Mrs. Chilcote has fallen in love with the imposter, but after the conventional struggle against temptation, the two agree to part, resolving first to bring the real Chilcote to his own once again. They seek him and find him dead, the inconvenient personage in a novel always dies at precisely the right moment, then Love triumphs, the woman tempts and the man eats, to wit, the sham Chilcote decides to be the real Chilcote, wife and all.

Perhaps Mrs. Thurston believed that she had solved the moral problem. As a fact, it is more entangled at the end than at the inception. But moral or no moral she has managed the "grip" and "The Masquerader" reads without a break to the last paragraph. One has passed a couple of hours pleasantly, absorbedly occupied; what matters it if one quickly forgets? Better forget than to analyze and find a shell where one thought to find a rich and sappy kernel.

Double Harness*

T is Mr. Hawkins's aim to hold the mirror up to Nature. We'could wish that the mirror were a little less clear and possessed of lesser magnifying qualities.

"Double Harness" is by no means an elegant epithet to apply to marriage; it has the taint of cynicism, the suggestion of a flippant treatment of a sacred theme. No more do these diversified specimens of "harnessing" serve to uphold lofty marriage ideals or tend to inspire aspirations for what has been generally considered a felicitous state. We could say "Please O Mr. Hope, leave our idols," for truly the author goes to work in iconoclastic mood, and the result is much like a debris

of shattered marble from out of which arises an unsubstantial but taunting shadow.

Anthony Hope knows the world, knows men and women. Experience and ob

*DOUBLE HARNESS. By Anthony Hope, author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," etc. McClure. Phillips & Co.

servation do not, however, always combine to work out a vivid conception of an ideal; newspapers keep us sufficiently well posted on the subject of incompatibility in marriage for us to forget that in many cases marriage is indeed a failure. But success never comes from a blue contemplation of failure; the failure may teach its lesson, but progress is effected through the following after the better things.

There is, for the writer of fiction, a mean between bald realism and a too-rosy idealism; Mr. Hope inclines decidedly to the realistic. He has changed since the days of "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "Rupert of Hentzau." He has become the man with the scalpel and the scalpel and the pen of the romanticist are rarely held in the same hand.

In this case the scalpel has dissected with undeniable skill and an insistent

surety, some interesting specimens of the genus homo-Sybilla with exaggerated ideals that might not be incongruous in a mad-woman; Grantley, the typical, the self-satisfied English bore; Christine, the butterfly, who catches her bright wings in the wilderness tangle and barely manages extrication; young Blake, the emotional idol of hyperbolic, emotional women; Lord Caylesham, the suave, accomplished sinner: Tom Courtland, the wifeoppressed and weakling, and Harriet, the ill-tempered and stormy-what a mixture it is, a collection worthy a hobbyist's mu

seum and worthy Mr. Hope's discernment and painstaking effort. He has drawn them well, they stand forth individually, they are appropriate collectively, they need little background, they create their own atmosphere. But the atmosphere is sombre, tragedy-fraught, the magic of love is absent from it. The romance of Sybilla and Grantley blossoms late and the blossom has by that time lost much of its beauty and its intoxicating fragrance. Mr. Hope is looking on life with pessimistic eyes, his glimpses of sunlight are brief and mostly shadowed.

Yet he handles his story with masterly skill and a fine sense of artistic fitness, the diction is polished and the whole has the effect of a picture exquisitely and finely wrought, but it is a picture that must be hung in the gold glory of the sunrise; one must indeed look upon it with thoughts. optimistic-filtered.

every-day life, glossed over with a fine enamel of romance.

The author of "The Man on the Box" is a talented writer. He has a way of his own, and he has not stooped to the slightest imitative quality. His work has elements that stand alone and stand conspicuous from among the hum-drum monotony of a conventional style, they are the elements of naturalness, individual humor and independence. Few things are new; Mr. MacGrath did not expect his readers to look upon Warburton's disguise as groom, a subterfuge to keep him near the woman of his heart, as novel. Nor did he expect to have Colonel Annesley's fall from grace, his loss of his daughter's fortune through gambling, his selling of his country's fortification plans to the Russian enemy, labeled new. He aimed at freshening and brightening the old devices by employing them in a story of his own, his own because every page bears the rubber-stamp mark of his strong personality.

He tells the tale leisurely, contentedly, he philosophizes between the acts, and seems to have enjoyed the making of the story quite as much as his reader enjoys the perusal of it. He makes you thoroughly acquainted with every character in the book, then altogether, he, you and they, have a pleasant sojourn, during which a delightful comedy unfolds itself, touches tragedy for a moment, then swerves to the swift making of a happy end.

It is all very clean, very wholesome, yet very human, and most of all it is what it was intended to be, vastly entertaining. The aim, "which was to please," was justified when Mr. MacGrath wrote "The Man on the Box."

of suspense when anxious hearts awaited news of a reported conflict. And here Mrs. Amelia E. Barr lays the scenes of her newest story, the prettiest love-tale that this author, long experienced in the art of writing pretty love-tales, has ever accomplished.

Sapphira of the sapphire eyes is a most lovable and human heroine, Leonard Murray is the type of hero that women love and men admire. There is a delightful company brought together and the everyday events of the pleasant household which holds the centre of the boards are contrived against the vast and manycolored background of the war, which the author, with true artistic instinct and an unfaltering knowledge of her public keeps merely a background, and no more, thereby gaining the full effect of atmosphere. and picturesqueness for her romance.

The quaintness of the age is agreeably suggestive, the constancy of human nature in its essential attributes is faithfully portrayed, in the Judge's dislike for Murray, Annette's skilful wielding of a sharp tongue, Sapphira's unreasonableness with her lover and her acute sorrow after having driven him away. Of course they are re-united and a graceful little marriage ceremony ensues; in the final chapter we are told through a conversation of some descendants that they did truly live happy, thereafter, that is, as happy as it is given human beings with all the failings of the human, to live. All of this is refreshing and thoroughly enjoyable.

An Angel by Brevet*

N the South Miss Pitkin is recognized as a writer of no indifferent gifts. Her appearance among us is therefore welcome, insomuch as it is the good thing for which we are looking.

"An Angel by Brevet" is a story of modern New Orleans, and to the Northerner who knows not this most strange and fascinating city in many of its more ingrained aspects, the volume will be something little short of a revelation. That the old Creole superstitions survive in such strength, that they grip even the

*AN ANGEL BY BREVET. By Helen Pitkin. With frontispiece by Revell. J. B. Lippincott Co.

most intelligent and make even the cultured fall to the level of the ignorant under their bewitching spell, that their power is sufficient to cause modern, rational persons to conduct themselves in a manner befitting nothing higher than the savages-all these things show the force with which tradition and superstition survive modernity. and civilization, and accomplish no end of harm before they die hard.

It is a comprehensive picture of conditions that Miss Pitkin gives us, yet she gives it all the Voudou practices, the night orgies, the chills that strike the credulous-with true artistic taste, without luridness and without that exaggerated unpleasantness which many novelists seem to feel that it behooves them to enforce whenever opportunity offers.

Miss Pitkin's characterization is most appreciable. Madame and the Colonel, superb aristocrat and gallant old soldier; the Doctor, strong and lovable; Angele, girlish, sweet, foolish as girls will be, but developing a womanhood that blossoms with love into a rare and gentle nobility, they are all worth meeting.

The romance never falls under the limelight, save in the last chapter, and then the hues are soft and of the twilight,—a hallowed scene as a love-scene should be.

It is all in an atmosphere new to our most familiar fiction-it has the indolent charm of the far South, the passion of intense temperaments, the shadow of superstition's eclipse.

The literary quality deserves mention. The style is ripe, the diction elegant, somewhat largely French-bespattered, a condition probably unavoidable and with but one weakness, the weakness of a little overelegance. Miss Pitkin strikes out from the conventional with daring strides, and in her tendency towards the unique, falls

now and then into small errors of affectation, harmless, yet noticeable.

North have found in her a sympathetic and able portrayer; she has caught the very spirit of their being; she has acquired their vernacular; she has even learned their folk-lore. All these things she has put into a story of renunciation, which is strong, even as it is pathetic; a sincere expression; a detailed, illuminative picture; a forceful, impressive piece of portraiture.

The Shetland Islands have no trees; just a wee bit of stubble here and there. The mighty sea bounds high on the shores and the great storms swoop with funeral pinions over the bleak land. Not a family but yields up at some time a loved one, often more than one, to the relentless ocean; the boats go out and come inbut many fail to come and "it's many a woman in Setter'll be wailing the morn."

Terval, the boy, sees his father brought home a paralytic, after the "great storm;" on that night, too, knows his heart a still more poignant sorrow, for he discovers his mother's drunkenness. Thirty years later he witnesses his father's death, from

the shock of a like discovery. But the man never wavers in his duty and devotion to the weak, old woman; every time he puts himself aside and bends his care to the making of her comfort. His hair is gray, long, long before she dies, but after that he reaps in joy that which he has sown in sorrow, and Meggy-Peggy and the dream come true. Even a child is born, as Isaac to Abraham, and so he finds that the "harvest is hope."

Miss Rickert's literary style is well suited to her subject. Her descriptions are like painted landscapes, done with the darker colors, in oil. For instance, she opens her book with,

There is a little world of islands within the fastness of the Northern Sea where the years turn so softly from to-morrow into yesterday. that they are scarce marked but by the upspringing of fresh crops of wee things, that presently come to be dandling bairns of their own. The old men forget the count of their days; and the old women cling to the fringes of immortality.

By the use of idiomatic expression, Miss Rickert has managed the atmosphere per

fectly; her own personality never intrudes save in strength; her aim has been to copy faithfully; to let her characters interpret themselves. In her grasp of the darker things of life, she reminds us forcibly of Hall Caine and the scene in which Christopher Humphrey returns to the Shetlands is nearly identical, in the spirit of the situation, with that in which the prodigal returns home in "The Prodigal Son."

H. RIDER HAGGARD

The Brethren*

Two lovers by a maiden, sate, Without a glance of jealous hate; The maid her lovers sat between, With open brow and equal mien;It is a sight but rarely spied,

Thanks to man's wrath and woman's pride. SCOTT.

U

PON this suggestive verse hangs Mr. H. Rider Haggard's new romance. For the pictures with which to adorn his stage-scenes, Mr. Haggard goes back to events of medieval history and chooses for central figure the great Salah-ed-din.

Two Frankish knights, brave and dauntless, twin brothers, with a cousin, Lady Rosamund, niece of Salah-ed-din, daughter of another Frankish knight, Sir Andrew D'Arcy-these are the characters

*THE BRETHREN. by H. Rider Haggard, author of "Stella Fregelius," etc. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. McClure, Phillips & Co.

which make the romance. For both knights love Rosamund, and Rosamund loves both, so the brothers agree to let the lady choose between them, bestowing her hand upon him whom she loves best, they taking oath that he who loses shall lose gracefully and without anger towards the other.

But Rosamund places the time of choice a year away, and in the meantime Salahed-din has a vision and because of the vision sends for his niece. Refused by her father, Salah-ed-din's agents kill Sir Andrew, drug the brothers and fly with Rosamund. When next the three meet it is in the East, where adventure follows adventure until finally the Crusades are over, the vision of Salah-ed-din is fulfilled and Rosamund is given to the brother that she loves best.

The spirit of mediæval times is in the story. Blood flows easily, men kill each other without a thought,-Christianity is a matter of form rather than of spirit, anc Mohammedanism is a synonym for fanaticism. They were days when knights were brave and hardy and woman could wield the dagger with effect; the days when the world seemed happiest if the clash of weapons was in the air and the field of battle was death-strewn.

Mr. Haggard's picture of Salah-ed-din is valuable as a character sketch of the famous Saladin of the Crusades; his history is chosen from an age full of fascination and color. Perhaps the highest compliment that we can pay "The Brethren" is to say that we do not find it superfluous, as we find most historical novels nowadays. Mr. Stearns's "God Wills It" was a fuller, more detailed and accurate picture, but it lacked romantic feeling. This has a love story which pleases and which will continue to please.

more