There is adventure enough in Roger Pocock's new story, "Curly, A Tale of the Arizona Desert," some good descriptive writing, and a little genuine humor. But the general effect is slangy and sensational. Blue-pencilling would have improved the book, but, with a band of cattle-thieves and train-robbers for its heroes, it would still have been of doubtful quality. Bret Harte's faults need Bret Harte's talent. Little, Brown & Co.

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A new anthology of Australasian verse is being compiled by Mr. A. G. Stephens, and will be published in Sydney and London. There seems to have been no "slump in poetry" in Australia. The country has a long list of poets, Lawson, Paterson, Ogilvie, Barcroft Boake, Victor Daley, Bernard O'Dowd, Lindsay Gordon; and their works sell, not by the hundred, as do those of most living poets in England, but by the thousand-to be read not only in drawing-rooms and libraries, but by swagmen's camp-fires and in shearers' huts.

One of the most delightful books of the season is Mary Austin's "Isidro." A story of Southern California in the days of the Franciscan missions, its hero is the second son of a noble Spanish family, destined for the Church, and the adventures which meet him as he rides forth light-hearted to seek the Father President at Monterey, make up a narrative in which sport, chivalry and romance are charmingly blended. Isidro himself is an uncommonly attractive character; the several padres stand out with marked distinctness; even the Mexicans and halfbreeds have individualities of their own. The incidents succeed each other

rapidly, but never in a way to overtax the credulity or offend the taste, and they are balanced by the psychological interest which the plot unfolds, as well as by an artistic disposition of comment and descriptive writing. Unlike most current fiction, this story has that rare quality-atmosphere. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Sidney McCall, whose first book, "Truth Dexter," achieved such a popular success, has done some very striking work in his new novel, "The Breath of the Gods." The story opens in Washington, with the beautiful and audacious daughter of a Western Senator, and her dearest school friend, a young Japanese girl of rank, for companion heroines, and the romances of the two promise to be of equal interest. But when Senator Todd is appointed Minister to Japan and Yuki Onda returns with his party to her parents, Gwendolen's penchant for one of the Secretaries of Legation serves merely as the touch of comedy to relieve the tragic course run by Yuki's love for a young French attaché whose strain of Russian blood makes him peculiarly odious to her family. The arrival in Tokio is almost coincident with the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Japan, and from this point on public and private affairs are intermingled in a plot of vivid and intense interest. The descriptions of Japanese life as seen in Yuki's home are charming, and her own character from the initial struggle between the old loyalty and the new, is finely conceived and executed. Prince Hagané, the Minister of War, is a grim and commanding figure. Little, Brown &

Co.

Problems are admittedly at a discount just now. Our wants have become very simple. We ask two things only-to be amused and to be rich. Yet, like much else reckoned out of date and unfashionable, problems continue to present themselves with an irritating and ill-bred persistence, laying impeding hands upon us, as did the Ancient Mariner upon the Wedding Guest, to the destruction of the latter's enjoyment of the marriage festivities. Recently a problem, old as the dawn of human legend-some would, perhaps, say of human history, since that which produces legend must, one would imagine, rather necessarily precede it has presented itself in a form arrestingly articulate and concrete. Essentially this problem is none other than that of Eden-the problem of the man and the woman, of the apple, and, incidentally, of the snake. A solution of it-I write with all reverence-was given at the time. But the race has advanced by giant strides at least we are rather violently assured that it has -along the road of enlightment since those dim and distant ages. Social and economic, even moral conditions,

have radically changed. Is it, then, conceivable that the original solution still holds good? That it remains the same to-day as then, the same on forever? A speaker, and one as the modern world goes worthy of more than passing attention, declares this to be the case with no uncertain voice. This gives food for reflection; the more that it has hardly been our habit to look to a presidential message to Congress for the enunciation of counsels of perfection, or to the people of the United States for subscription to primitive ideals in respect of social and domestic relations. Wherever on the face of this planet the earthly paradise, from which our first parents suffered just expulsion, may have been planted, we, as Europeans, have heretofore nursed a sustaining conviction it was very surely not on the existing site of Chicago, or even at Boston or New York. Consequently, some clauses in President Roosevelt's recent utterance are disconcerting, causing us a distinct shock of surprise. To ardent and sanguine spirits, enamored of theories of progressive social reform, they may very well cause a shock of rebellious anger

likewise. For these clauses undeniably justify the fear that in human affairs there is, actually, no such thing as full steam ahead; that of these, as of eternity itself, the symbol is not the straight line, but the circle-thus adding proof, were it needed, that the world is round after all, innocent of any "jumping off place," and that the saying "if you go far enough West you come East" holds a truth of deeper and more far-reaching import than the obvious geographical one. It is with this truth I would attempt briefly to deal.

Using the question of child labor and of the work of married women in factories as his text, President Roosevelt preaches the American nation a sermon involving very wide issues-issues so wide, indeed, that they affect the office and status of women in civilized communities all the world over and of every rank. "The prime duty of the man," he tells us, "is to work, to be the bread-winner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of tariff and finance sink into insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying so to shape conditions that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances." This is a return to first principles with a vengeance. It is also the seriously considered pronouncement of the popularly elected ruler of the most progressive nation of the world, in the first decade of the twentieth century. In reading it, one cannot but pause to picture, with a trifle of malicious gaiety, the sensations of all féministes, English speaking and Continental. To an experimental excursion into maternity, the offspring being limited to one, and that, of course, illegitimate, some among them might not so very much object. But marriage, housewifery, the permanent

subordination of the woman to the claims of the husband, the family and the household, this is rank heresyheresy, moreover, seasoned with insult. President Roosevelt, however, leaves no loophole of escape. He makes his meaning perfectly clear. "If a race does not have plenty of children," he continues, "or if these children do not grow up, or if, when they grow up, they are unhealthy in body or stunted or vicious in mind, then that race is decadent, and no heaping up of wealth, no splendor of monetary prosperity can avail in any degree as offsets."

To those of us who are not féministes, and whose needs are not, as yet, wholly limited to the possession of wealth and practice of amusement, these utterances-when our first astonishment that such a gospel should derive from such a source is past-will appeal as sane and sound, a return to right reason and common-sense. Only, we cannot but ask ourselves, does not this return come too late? Is it possible thus to set back the hands of the clock, and eradicate tendencies which have been enthusiastically fostered during two generations in England, and are now in active development in various Continental countries? Is it possible to place woman again, in respect of her ideals and her romance, in the position of our great-grandmothers, without a rather deplorable uprooting, along with the tares, of the wheat? Without, in short, depriving her of advantages in education, in the tenure of property, in social and civic freedom, and, indirectly, of usefulness to the State, which she has so laboriously and, let it be added, so courageously acquired? Mast not President Roosevelt's views, however interesting and theoretically admirable, be pronounced unpractical and impracticable, realizable perhaps by people of special temperament under special conditions, but incapable of moulding the thought and

habits of the bulk of any progressive nation in our present highly complex state of civilization? For, putting aside sentimentalism and faddist absurdities alike, it will be seen, I think, on closer analysis that the demand for self-abnegation on the part of a large section of our feminine population would be a very heavy one in thus setting back the hands of the clock. An intolerably heavy one, indeed, unless it be inspired and sustained by something far more intimately compelling, more appealing, more fruitful of inward consolation, than an obligation, real or imagined, of abstract patriotism, It must be remembered that the British mind finds curiously small motivepower in abstractions; while its patriotism, though ingrained beyond all question of doubt, is of the placid, take-it-all-for-granted sort. And if this is true of the average man, it is even truer of the average woman, the vast majority of whom are quite oblivious that they have a country unless the foreigner - individually or collectively-shows a disposition, of course wholly irrational, to attack it. But to attempt that closer analysis. The different classes in England-and it is to England that I propose to limit my inquiry-shade into one another by such fine gradations that it is difficult to generalize concerning any one of them without risk of appearing superficial or arbitrary. Still, roughly speaking, it is among the women of the middleclass that this demand for self-abnegation would be most keenly felt, since it is they who have assimilated ideas of emancipation most freely and applied them most extensively to the conduct of life.

In the highest class the position and ideals of woman have changed very little under the new régime. She was always fairly well educated. She is so still. Marriage was her object, if not always her destiny. It remains so.

Owing to questions of inheritance, of title, of landed and other property, it was in the bond that she should bear children. The conditions remain the same; and, having a sense of honor, not, perhaps, altogether common to her sisters of less exalted rank, she has not, and does not now, shirk fulfilling her part of the bargain. Her attitude is almost that of the Jewess of the Old Testament; and to be childless is not only a sorrow, but something of a shame to her, she having thereby, missed her very raison d'être. She has always been in touch with sport, with politics, and with philanthropy; and though her activities in these directions may have multiplied, they flow in the same channels as of old. If she possess beauty and intellect, these enhance her personal value and increase her opportunities; but they do not alter the conditions of her existence to any appreciable extent. For in the highest class the man is very much master still, and the woman's life consequently shapes itself to his desires. Even if he marry some Transatlantic or Colonial millionairess, she has, sooner or later, to submit to the exigencies of her acquired position and come into line. Let it be understood that with this mastery the present writer has-kindly -no quarrel, protracted and dispassionate observation having convinced her that, though he does not always use his power very pleasantly, the man's way, on the whole, is best.

Of the working classes, the same is true. A few cruelties and crying evils have been mitigated by sentiment or legislation, yet practically the woman's position remains very much what it was fifty years ago. She is better educated; but this one regretfully hesitates to hail as an unmixed blessing. If it has somewhat enlarged her outlook, it has also increased her restlessWhile, once away from school, actualities of food, clothing, and pleas

ness.