WAS IT A BATTLE OR A FOOT-RACE?
From the Times-Herald (Chicago).

The contest in Ohio has naturally given the American cartoonists plenty of opportunity. The Buckeye statesmen-Senators Hanna and Foraker in particularmight, if they chose, fill up a large scrap-book with recent newspaper caricatures, as a souvenir of the memorable struggle at Columbus in the opening days of the year 1898. Mr. Davenport, of the New York Journal, who has made Mr. Hanna a specialty for two years,

HANNA'S SENATORIAL RACE-CAN HE KEEP HIS SEAT? From the Journal (New York).

would naturally have the first place in such a scrapbook. Two of Davenport's cartoons are reproduced on this page. The Chicago Times-Heraid was the especial champion of Mr. Hanna as against Mr. Foraker and the Kurtz combination; and we have reproduced two of Mr. Morgan's caricatures from that paper. Our readers will understand that although Senator Foraker was alleged to be neutral in the contest, Mr. Hanna's friends regarded Foraker as "keeping hands off" in the peculiar manner herewith delineated.

HOW JOSEPH BENSON FORAKER "KEPT HANDS OFF." From the Times-Herald (Chicago).

HANNA (DISFIGURED) GIVES HIS FRIENDS THE "GLAD HAND."

From the Journal (New York).

THE present generation is so accustomed to think of Sapho " as a classic that one is reminded with surprise by the notice of Daudet's death on December 16 last that the novelist was only fifty-seven years of age. Ever since men of middle age can remember, Daudet has been a rarely typical figure in French literature. He well deserved in his methods and in his ambitions, as well as in his actual achievements, this reputation. His was the true literary life as we are fond of picturing it, and his nature was the artist's nature, in its breadth as well as in its limitations. His origin, his early life, his invasion of Paris from the seclusion of the provinces, his early struggles and privations in the great city, the brilliancy of his successes, his entire devotion to his art, his hatred of form, his sunny and sometimes fiery spirit, his great humanity and tenderness-all give him the entourage with which tradition is fond of surrounding the literary artist.

DAUDET'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS HOME.

Daudet was born at Nimes in 1840. His mother and father were of peasant origin; the family was poverty-stricken. Those who knew the Daudets credit the mother of Alphonse with the imagination and sensibility which came to her son. She was a delicate woman, unable to cope with the realities of the world, distressed by the narrow means of the family and the incapacity of her husband; her only pleasure in life seemed to be the wholesale perusal of the great works of fiction. Daudet himself has given in an interview, published on both sides of the water, an account of this period of his life.

"My youth at home was a lamentable one. I have no recollection of home which is not a sorrowful one, a recollection of tears. The baker who refuses bread; the servant whose wages could not be paid, and who declares that she will stay on without wages and becomes familiar in consequence, and says 'thou' to her master; the mother always in tears; the father always scolding. My country is a country of monuments. I played at marbles in the ruins of the Temple of Diana, and raced with my little comrades in the devastated Roman arena. It is a beautiful country, however, and I am proud of my relation to it. My name seems to indicate that I descend from the Moorish settlers of Provence; for, as you know, the Provençal people is largely of Moorish extraction. Indeed, it is from that circumstance that I have drawn much of the humor of my books, such as 'Tartarin.' It is funny, you know, to hear of men with bushy black hair and flaring eyes, like bandits and wild warriors, who are, the one a peaceful baker, the other the least offensive of apothecaries. I myself have the

Moorish type, and my name, Daudet, according to the version which I like best, is the Moorish for David. Half my family is called David. Others say that Daudet means 'Deodat,' which is a very common name in Provence, and, derived from Deo datus, means. 'Given by God.' I know little of my predecessors, except that in 1720 there was a Chevalier Daudet, who wrote poetry and had a decade of celebrity in the south. But my brother Ernest, who used to be ambitious, in his book 'Mon Frère et Moi,' has tried to trace our genealogy from a noble family. Whatever we were at one time, we had come very low down in the world when I came into existence, and my childhood was as miserable a one as can be fancied. I have to some extent related its unhappiness in my book 'Le Petit Chose.""

Alphonse Daudet showed an aptitude for literary construction even before he entered the Lycée of Lyons at the age of thirteen. He already attempted verses and read indiscriminately every work of imagination on which he could lay his hands. These no doubt formed a vastly greater and more important part of his education than did the three years at college, for the boy was of the susceptible, quick, and passionate nature which does not lend itself well to academic training. He taught in some miserably paid capacity for a year after leaving the college, and then, with his brother Ernest, went up to the

great city of Paris, resolved to make his fortune as a littérateur, and with the more specific ambition of writing the songs of the poor. The two boys had the conventional garret existence of the newly arrived poet for a year or so, during which Daudet composed the poems which appeared in his first volume, whose title, "Les Amoureuses," shows that the volatile méridional had quickly and easily relinquished the thought of attempting the great epic of sansculottism. The verses attracted attention and were quickly followed by another volume of poems, "Le Double Conversion." These first lyric strains had so much of music and feeling in them that the Empress Eugénie was attracted to the struggling young writer, and before long he received a position as secretary of the Comte de Morny, which he held for five years. This engagement was a godsend to Daudet, for it gave him an opportunity to devote himself to his art, and even to travel in Sardinia, Algiers, and Corsica, where his youthful and exuberant fancy seized hold of many impressions that served as groundwork for the masterpieces which were to come. In this period, too, Daudet became a contributor to Le Figaro; much, if not most, of his very greatest work appeared in this paper, and he continued to be a regular contributor of its feuilletons during his life.

A SUCCESS OF THE TRUE ARTIST.

Daudet flung himself into the life of Paris with the passionate enthusiasm that might be expected of a young Gascon with a nature so sensitive and so luxuriant. He grew up in his literary work with the Goncourt brothers, Turgéneff, Flaubert, and Zola. The same classic ideals of perfection in form, to be achieved by vast industry and by what Stevenson declared was sweating blood," that made the significance of Flaubert, controlled Daudet in his slightest effort. His plan of work was to jot in his note book every impression, incident, or thought that seemed to him likely to become worthy of literary exploitation and to refer to this mine of material when the moment for creation arrived. He wrote rather slowly, with his pen, except his plays, which were dictated, and revised and re-revised with interminable patience and care. With Flaubert such a method produced but little over and above his perfection of form and style. Daudet, tingling to the tips Daudet, tingling to the tips of his fingers with rich and vivacious life, was never for a moment in danger of succumbing to the fascination of mere form, which has made Flaubert seem arid to most readers. No human passion, sorrow, joy, could fail to find a responsive chord in Daudet's nature.

Such a temperament in such a field was not likely to be held within the limits of sobriety and

prudence, and Daudet is commonly credited with a sufficiently wild life in these earlier Paris days. He had the great good fortune, however, to marry a noble, helpful woman when he was only twenty-six years old. Madame Daudet had an exquisite sensitiveness to art, and was, indeed, an authoress herself, although after her marriage she found occupation enough in the loving labor of sharing her husband's thoughts and plans, in helping to lay out schemes for stories and novels, and best of all in bringing such order to his household as gave him the easiest opportunity and invitation to regular literary work.

Notwithstanding his early success and the reputation for brilliancy which he had achieved immediately on the publication of his first prose tale, Le Petit Chose," in 1868, it is said that Daudet's annual income from his writings did not