on the outside with the pseudonyme. These envelopes will not be opened until after the awards have been determined upon." It would seem hardly necessary to explain that the winner is not required to answer all the questions. "The person who answers the greatest number most satisfactorily" will win the capital prize even if the greatest number answered be only ten, and so on with the other prizes. Further, the literary excellence of the individual answers will count for much in making the final award, so that it does not even follow that the person who answers the most questions, unless they are also answered most satisfactorily, will win the prize. Slouchy or semi-correct answers will be credited, of course, but will receive less marks than good answers. And the total number of marks will decide the question of the prize-winners. 81. Whence the phrase "A month's mind"? 82. What is the etymology of Mugwump, and when was the word first used in American politics? 83. What is the legend of the Palace of Sans Souci, and what amount of historic truth does it contain? 84. Whence does the court of Exchequer obtain its name? 85. Whence did Hawthorne obtain the hint for his story of "Wakefield”? and what monkish legend resembles it? 86. What were the O. P. riots? 87. Where are the two islands called respectively Jack-a-Dan and Kickem-Jenny? 88. Who was called "Poet-laureate of the Bees"? 89. Why do brides wear orange-blossoms? 90. What is the story of the Kilkenny Cats? 91. Whence the expression "crocodile tears"? 92. What was the old fable of the origin of the barnacle goose? 93. Whence the slang word a "boom"? 94. Who originated the expression "the three R's"? and did he do it in jest or in earnest? 95. Which is the longest word in the English language? 96. What historical foundation is there for the poem " Barbara Frietchie"? 97. What is the origin of "news" as applied to newspapers? 98. Who was the Gabbon Saer? 99. When and where did envelopes originate? 100. Why are opals considered unlucky? As several complaints have been made that the queries referring to our NoName number are too difficult of solution, the Gossip trusts to simplify matters by publishing in alphabetical order the names of the anonymous authors who contributed, leaving it to the ingenuity of his correspondents to affix the names to the right articles: H. H. Boyesen, Helen Gray Cone, Rebecca Harding Davis, Edgar Fawcett, Henry Harland (Sidney Luska), Sidney Lanier, Joaquin Miller, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt, Henry D. Thoreau. Nevertheless, it has been thought best, in view of many requests, that these ten questions be withdrawn entirely from the competition, leaving ninety questions instead of one hundred in the list. BOOK-TALK. WHAT WHAT fools these mortals be!" says Puck, and, indeed, to a higher order of beings we can present no very heroic appearance. Dear brother reader, even you and I,-you and I who have such excellent reasons for holding ourselves better than our fellow-mortals,—even we are fools. The ceaseless gabble of our tongues must be amusing enough to angelic ears. We all talk nonsense, even when we are proudest of our intellectual powers. Some of us talk nonsense that we have heard from others, and then the world calls it common sense; some of us talk nonsense out of our own heads, and then the world is undecided whether we are geniuses or dunces, and talks an immense amount of additional nonsense before the point is determined. But to genius as to dunce the great lesson of life is that he knows nothing, that the only wisdom is a recognition of his ignorance. Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, George Eliot,-these be great names to us little men. The greatest is only like St. Augustine, gathering a few shells on the sand, while the infinite, mysterious, fathomless ocean stretches unexplored and unexplorable before them. We speak reverently of their knowledge of the heart, of their insight into character. What does any poet or novelist of them all really know of the abysmal depths of personality? Sometimes when they paint a hero we may find, in this or that heroic quality, in this or that amiable weakness, a faint reflex of some characteristic we recognize in ourselves, or when they paint a scamp we may find a tolerably accurate representation of our neighbor. But then we know little about our neighbor, and less about ourselves. "What a world this would be," says Christopher North, "were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything else in a style of equal perfection!" Nay, good Christopher, the world would remain the same old dull commonplace world. Our standard would be raised, that is all. If every one rode like Ducrow, no one would stop a moment to look at Ducrow; if every one fiddled like Paganini, Paganini's fiddle would be complained of by the neighbors as a nuisance; if every one discoursed like Coleridge, Coleridge would be voted an intolerable bore. We give our admiration to intellectual performances that are rare and difficult. The moment the rarity and the difficulty disappear our admiration also disappears, we seek fresh idols to worship. If the average physical standard of the race were suddenly to be raised to-say ten feet, the noble Chang, who is now a Colossus, would become a dwarf. Political economists tell us that the discovery of a new gold-mine would in no wise increase the wealth of the world. If there were two dollars in circulation for every one at present, two dollars would buy no more than one dollar does now. See the different degrees of admiration accorded to men. In every village tavern you find political magnates who between "chaws" and drinks astonish the gaping by-standers with the magnitude of their knowledge as compared with the size of their heads. Canning used to say that the awe and admiration which a sixth-form boy excites from the members of lower classes are greater than he could ever again hope to obtain if he rose to be prime minister. Country lawyers, country doctors, country parsons, country school teachers, who have astonished their neighborhood without perceptibly impressing the outside world, settle the affairs of America, the disputes of foreign nations, literature, philosophy, and theology, over their own domestic hearth-stones, and many a simple mind has no doubt wondered whether Bismarck, Cleveland, Gladstone, or the Pope might not gain useful hints by hearkening to Paterfamilias. Well, the great historian, the great poet, the great statesman, the great philosopher, whose names are familiar words in our mouths, are as fallible and as foolish as Paterfamilias, as the sixth-form boy, as the village magnate, as you and I are. The intellectual feats that they perform only happen to be more difficult to the average man, that is all. But all is folly and vanity,-the gabble of fools. Yea, my brother. Let us go up on the house-tops with Carlyle and shout the great gospel of silence. Or, rather, let us take to ourselves the lesson of humility in lieu of preaching it to others. Let us recognize that though all codes are temporary and may be revolutionized to-morrow, yet the higher code of to-day, retrograde even though it be in some aspects, faulty and foolish in all aspects as it may appear to the wiser generations that shall follow us, is the highest code that the human race has so far evolved out of chaos, and let us refrain from returning to chaos because of any faults and follies we may discern in it. Let us recognize, also, that, though there is no absolute greatness, there is relative greatness, that though in the face of the Infinite all men are puny, insignificant, and foolish, yet in a world where seven feet makes a giant it behooves us lesser men to look up to those who have surpassed the normal standard. Hero-worship is folly, but it is the sort of folly that helps us fools in our struggle after wisdom. Let our humility extend still further. Let us recognize all workers who are above the ordinary grade of intelligence as in the vanguard of humanity, as pioneers of the future. It is fashionable to sneer at this or that popular novelist, to style him a purveyor of trash. Well, good reader, the popular novelist is a more valuable citizen than the man who does nothing, but only sneers. He is in some way-mysterious, it may be, to us-helpful to a number of excellent and well-meaning human beings. Even the nine days' wonder does good work within the limit of his nine days. Do not let us compare every one by the standard of Shakespeare, Dante, or George Eliot. The men of the hour are sufficient for the hour. Few, perhaps, of our living writers will survive for the future, but that need not deter the children of the present from recognizing their worth. A sliding scale is indispensable for correct judgment. It is significant how we instinctively adjust this sliding scale to all matters of every-day life. We call Jones or Robinson a brilliant conversationalist, when he only offers us a dim reflex of the books that, mayhap, we sneer at. We give the ready guerdon of a laugh to jests which would look poor enough in type. On the amateur stage we applaud performances which we would not tolerate before the real foot-lights. We may almost discard our sliding scale, however, in the presence of such a man as Lowell. We may judge him by the highest human standard and not find many greater than he. "With the gift of song," says Lowell himself, "Carlyle would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer." Without the gift of humor, paradoxical as this may seem, Lowell would have been the greatest of American poets. We distrust the inspiration of the Pythoness if we see a smile upon her lips. There is something infernal, something Mephistophelian, about all humor, and in poetry at least we want Ormuzd divorced from Ahriman. To be sure, as it is, Lowell has written the greatest of all American poems, the Harvard Commemoration Ode, but that one poem hardly constitutes him the greatest of American poets when the bulk of his work is compared with, for instance, Walt Whitman's or Emerson's. "The Cathedral" is an even greater work, and would be a greater poem than the "Ode," but for its extreme cleverness,—but for the adroit and ingenious fancy which just plays upon the border of wit and would raise a smile if the theme were not so noble and so nobly treated. This cleverness has grown upon Lowell, somewhat to the detriment of his poetry. "Heartsease and Rue" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), which is his latest volume, contains much that is exquisite and delightful, it contains little great poetry. The best portions are not the serious work, not the portions marked “Friendship" and "Sentiment," not the tribute to Agassiz, nor the rhapsody of “Endymion," fine as these are, but such pieces of gay defiance, of half-hearted zeal, of unsated hunger, as "Credidimus Jovem Regnare," and "In the Half-Way House," which are grouped under the general head of "Humor and Satire ;" and the lines which linger in the memory are such delicious mots as For the goose of To-day still is Memory's swan. The most characteristic poem in the volume-characteristic, that is, of Mr. Lowell's present mental attitude-is "The Optimist," in which he pictures the child of light halting from his hopes of the promised land and finding momentary comfort in the flesh-pots of Egypt. Here, too, is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes with a new volume of poems, entitled "Before the Curfew." May it be many years before that curfew tolls! How shall we judge him?-by the little test of to-day, or by the larger test of eternity? He would bear no comparison, of course, with the great poets, but in the company of the great jesters in verse, with Horace, Béranger, Hood, Thackeray, Praed, he could certainly move as an equal. His laugh is the purest, brightest, heartiest, and most genial that is heard to-day in America,—the laugh of a scholar, a gentleman, and a poet in a land where the professional humorist is a little too apt to become a mountebank. And what shall we say of Amélie Rives, the young woman who has just been sent us from the South? Here are three of her short stories, "A Brother to Dragons," "The Farrier Lass o' Piping Pebworth,” and “ Nurse Crumpet tells the Story," bound together in a volume (Harper & Bros.). That she has passion, imagination, and poetical feeling, that she has a command of language which is occasionally exuberant, that she has the large frank utterance (In her white Ideal All statue-blind) which is ofttimes unintelligible to the honest, well-meaning Philistine, and misinterpreted by the clever man of the world,-all these facts are patent enough to the reader. Is she to be a nine days' wonder, or will she take her place among the masters? It is too early yet to say: her performance may fall below her promise. But, taking her performance at its present worth, we can recognize great qualities in it and some faults. The three stories collected in this volume are altogether the finest short stories that have appeared in American literature for years. G. P. Putnam's Sons send two more volumes of their "Knickerbocker Nuggets" and two more of their "Story of the Nations" series. Mention has already been made in these columns of the beauty of the Nuggets in external appearance. Paper, press-work, and binding unite to make them a joy to the eye. The two volumes recently received are "The Vicar of Wakefield" by Oliver Goldsmith, and "Letters, Sentences, and Maxims" by Lord Chesterfield. The latter gives you in small compass a well-chosen selection from an author whose letters are pleasanter to dip into than to read through. The two recent additions to the "Story of the Nations" are "Ireland" by the Hon. Emily Lawless and "The Goths" by Henry Bradley. Mrs. Lawless writes her story succinctly and agreeably, with an evident effort to be fair and dispassionate, an effort so far successful that although you feel she is on her guard, it is some time before you realize that what she is guarding against is a natural predilection for the Anglo-Saxon. The engravings add much more to the interest than to the beauty of the book. Mr. Bradley's "Goths" is an excellent summary of one of the most extraordinary episodes in all history, the invasion of Southern Europe by a tribe of Norse barbarians from the shores of the Baltic, their early reverses and eventual success, their conquest of the great Roman Empire which had once been the terror of the world, the culminating period of their glory when one of their kings sat on the throne of the Cæsars and another ruled over Spain and Gaul, and the sudden and tragic collapse of the entire Gothic nation, leaving scarcely a wrack behind. As the first English work expressly treating of the history of the Goths, the book is doubly welcome. Two excellent biographies (and, after you have lost your first youthful delight in fiction, there is no reading so charming as biography,-unless it be autobiography) are Prof. McMaster's "Benjamin Franklin" in Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s series "American Men of Letters," and R. L. Stevenson's "Fleeming Jenkin." We all know the hero of the former book; the hero of the latter was probably unknown to most of us until Mr. Stevenson introduced him. But to all lovers of good literature he must henceforth remain a charmed figure. Jenkin filled the Chair of Engineering in the University of Edinburgh, and was a recognized authority on Magnetism and Electricity, especially as applied to submarine telegraphy. In his lifetime he was known merely to specialists, though his fame among them was European. "But Jenkin," says Mr. Stevenson, “was a man much more remarkable than the mere bulk or merit of his work approves him. It was in the world, in the commerce of friendship, by his brave attitude towards life, by his high moral value and unwearied intellectual effort, that he struck the minds of his contemporaries." Mr. Stevenson has succeeded in reproducing this personal charm on paper. Prof. McMaster's was in some ways an easier task than Mr. Stevenson's, yet it had its counterbalancing difficulty. He takes no unfamiliar figure; we all have a distinct picture of the hearty, honest, cynical philosopher, with his almost savage sincerity, his homely wit and wisdom, his worldliness, his lack of what are known as high ideals, and yet his strenuousness in squaring his life to such ideals as he had which might be commended to the imitation of many |