poetical pieces will oblige him, as well as help the cause of literature, by sending them to his home at Shiocton. Chicago Times.

Rideing. William H. Rideing, although he has been on the editorial staff of the North American Review for three years, and works hard on the Youth's Companion as well, still finds time to work on his series of articles on ocean steamers, which will appear in Scribner's in early summer. Mr. Rideing, although an Englishman by birth, finds himself thoroughly in sympathy with Boston, where some of his best work has been done. He was an intimate friend of the late John Boyle O'Reilly, whose death was a severe shock to him. Whatever may be said as to the merits of typewritten manuscript, it is probable that an editor receiving an essay in the exquisitely neat, dainty, and finished handwriting of Mr. Rideing would prefer the chirography to machine work. No doubt, if the author were a stranger to him, he would imagine that the writer was a pretty, fashionable young girl residing on Commonwealth avenue. He would never imagine the scribe to be a sturdy Englishman, although the strength as well as the beauty of the handwriting might make him a little uncertain as to his judgment.

E. A. T.

Riis. Jacob A. Riis, author of "How the Other Half Lives," - -a thorough and comprehensive study of New York tenements and their denizens, is a native of Denmark. He reached America when about twenty years old, with no definite plans or purposes. When his money gave out he worked at anything that came to hand. In the fall of 1870 he was employed at a brick yard near New Brunswick, N. J. He was in sore straits at this time, and once slept in a graveyard. Another night he was compelled to seek shelter in a New York police station. Recalling those hard times, Mr. Riis recently told a reporter: —

"The night I slept in a police station I had picked up near the North river a black-and-tan dog (poor little beast!), and I carried it into the station. I had one thing of value, and that was a gold locket I wore inside my shirt. It had a lock of hair in it. That night some of the lodgers took it from me while I was sleeping, and when I found it was stolen, the one thing that connected me with home, I made a complaint to the sergeant, who ordered the doorman to kick me out.

'Do you

come in here,' cried he, and sleep, and yet tell me that you had a gold locket on your neck?' It did sound ridiculous. When I got outside with my dog I was angry enough to go back and demolish every one there. I wandered off a space, and while

I was gone the dog had a fit in the street and fell down; a crowd gathered, and a policeman came along and clubbed the poor animal to death before my eyes. It seemed to me that was the very last link that had given away."

Subsequently Mr. Riis obtained a position in New York as a newspaper reporter. He worked until 10 o'clock at night on his first assignment, and was too proud to tell any one that it was the third day he had not broken fast. When he reached the stairs to his room he fell in a dead faint. His circumstances speedily improved, and he was made police reporter. While doing this work he gathered many of the facts contained in his deeply interesting book, which has been one of the literary successes of the season. - Atchison Globe.

Roche. James Jeffrey Roche, the present editor of the Pilot and the successor of John Boyle O'Reilly, is a genial, sympathetic, and warm-hearted man, never too busy in the midst of his stirring editorial work to stop to do a kindness, even to a comparative stranger. Although not such an athlete as Mr. O'Reilly, Mr. Roche has a sturdy, well-knit frame, showing vigor and endurance. His face is wide-awake, and is lighted up by a pair of sparkling black eyes that scintillate as he talks. A slight black moustache covers a sensitive mouth, and the impression the whole personality gives is that of a wide-awake and yet sympathetic man. For many years Mr. Roche was Mr. O'Reilly's valued right-hand man as assistant editor, and the new proprietor of the paper, Patrick Donahoe, the founder of the Pilot, who has just bought it back from Archbishop Williams, has shown good judgment in retaining Mr. Roche at the head of the editorial department, a place which he has filled with satisfaction to all since Mr. O'Reilly's death. Mr. Roche makes none the less a good editor, because, like his great chief, he can write beautiful and stirring verse as well as trenchant editorials. His assistant editor, Miss Katharine E. Conway, for so many years one of the most valued officers of the New England Woman's Press Association, is also a poet of no mean ability, the pathos and self-renunciation of some of her best lyrics reminding the reader of Christina Rossetti. Many new features are promised for the Pilot under the leadership of its young editors.

E. A. T.

Smith. · A man of rather spare figure, medium height, dark eyes, and nervous hands, with a voice in which there are occasional inflections, reminding you of that softened Southern speech, so vainly represented by the repetition of the vowel, and a laugh that rings out true. There is a quick, decided

a

manner, and the talk reflects the decision of the mind; yet in a moment the graver, kindlier side of the character is shown in a half allusion tinged with pathos or with poetry. The transitions are quick from mood to mood; still not so quick they may not be followed with delight. Perhaps the most striking thing about the man is the odd originality of his views on subjects coming up in the desultory talk, but on analysis this seems to spring from humor as gentle as it is keen. He seems to look on life from the position of one to whom his fellows offer the most delicious of all comedies, and while you laugh as he shows you the scenes and situations which amuse him so much on the world stage about him, you notice the ready sympathy with sorrow or the generous admiration of what is noble and good. This is the man who is the author of "Colonel Carter of Cartersville," a serial now running in the Century Magazine. “I began writing 'Carter,' " said Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith to me as we sat before a delicious fire of wood in his studio, "under the name of 'Stories at the Dinner Table.' I had told the story of the postmaster, which is in the second chapter, for years, and I knew a lot of others I thought good. I wanted a chance to bring a Virginia colonel who was gentleman to the table, that he might tell some of them, and I wanted a negro to tell the goose story. But Carter got hold of me. I had known him in my mind for years - the tall, slight, Southern gentleman, reared under influences which have now passed away forever. I wanted to bring a Southern gentleman of the old school, of the slaveholding time, in contact with a Northern gentleman, such as Fitz, and to show that, while they had scarcely an idea in common, they yet understood and appreciated each other. I rewrote the first chapter of 'Carter' seven times. I selected the old home of the Tile Club on East Tenth street for his house, because I wanted a place which I knew from cellar to attic. Chad, his old servant, is a type of the body servant of the days that are gone, and is drawn from one that I knew well. Aunt Nancy is modelled on a lady I had the privilege of knowing and loving very dearly. Carter himself is made up of half a dozen gentlemen, but is chiefly taken from one who is now dead. As I said, Carter got hold of me and developed himself. During the time I was writing the thing that caused me the most sorrow was that I could not ask him to dinner, absurd as this may seem." Mr. Smith is the head of the firm of F. H. Smith & Co., which has built many of the great engineeering works along the coast. He is also a well-known artist, and it

amused me somewhat when in the office of the business man I made an appointment to meet the author in the artist's studio. - Alfred Balch, in Bangor Commercial.

LITERARY NEWS AND NOTES.

A book on the "Childhood and Youth of Charles

Dickens," by Robert Langdon, will soon be published in London.

During the past year fifty-one large libraries were sold in London. There were 52,647 lots in all, and they realized over $372,000.

The statement comes from London that the price paid by the Century for use of the advance selections from the Talleyrand memoirs was $5,000.

Olive Thorne Miller has within the past four months posted from her home in Brooklyn no less than 20,000 printed slips asking the women of New York not to wear birds or their plumage.

Laurence Hutton, of the staff of Harper's, will have a very interesting article on The Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh" in that magazine for March, with illustrations by Jo. Pennell.

The papers and letters of the late Alexander Kinglake are not numerous. About three years ago Mr. Kinglake burned a large number of them, and has left no documents arranged for any biographical purpose.

Vick's Floral Guide for 1891 is a book of more than 100 pages 8 1-4 by 10 1-2 inches, with colored illustrations. Instructions for planting and cultivating. List of seeds, plants, and bulbs, and full particulars regarding the cash prizes of $1,000 and $200. It will be sent for ten cents by James Vick, Rochester, N. Y.

Edmund Clarence Stedman makes his summer home in a quaint stone house on New Castle Island, in Piscataqua Bay. From the windows of this island villa there is an unsurpassed view of the ocean, and the irregular walls of the structure are overgrown with Virginia creepers and Japanese ivy. The house is furnished in the old colonial style.

"G. W. S.," Mr. Smalley, London correspondent of the Tribune,- who has been quite ill, is convalescing in the south of France, and will probably not return to London before early spring. Henry W. Lucy, for years the editor of the London Daily News, will supply the Tribune with correspondence during Mr. Smalley's enforced idleness.

Thomas Brower Peacock, the author, and his family are wintering in the South.

Edward Bellamy has begun the publication of a Boston weekly paper called the New Nation.

The John Boyle O'Reilly memorial fund is making rapid headway. Nearly $15,000 is already in the treasury.

Laurence Hutton has written for Harper's Monthly an article on the " Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh."

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe has been president of the Boston Woman's Club for twenty years, by unanimous choice of its members.

Mary Spear Tiernan, author of "Homoselle " (1881) and "Jack Horner" (1890), died in Baltimore January 13, of pneumonia.

Amélie Rives Chanler's novel, to which she has given the name "A Girl of the Pavement," is said to be now in the hands of a New York firm under consideration. She desires its publication first in serial form.

Rose Terry Cooke advises young girls, even those gifted with a literary talent, to place no dependence on literature as a bread-winner. "The life," she says, "is full of mortification, anxiety, and disappointment."

W. Clark Russell, whose sea stories have such remarkable dash, breeziness, and out-of-door freedom, has long been a hopeless and well-nigh helpless invalid, chained to an indoor existence in an inland town.

Moncure D. Conway is engaged on a life of Thomas Paine, and desires the use of letters and other material which may not be already at his disposal. Mr. Conway's address is No. 230 West Fifty-ninth street, New York.

Lord Tennyson is contemplating a voyage in the Mediterranean. There has, however,' says Galig nani's, been some difficulty in making arrangements, as Lord Tennyson insists strongly on being protected from his fellow-passengers.

Mrs. Mary H. Catherwood, an Illinois novelist of constantly growing reputation, has just returned to her home at Hoopeston from Boston, where she made most satisfactory arrangements with the Atlantic for the publication of a new serial entitled "The Lady of Fort St. John."

Colonel Donn Piatt, who has been in New York City for some weeks past looking after the publication of his forthcoming novel, has just completed an arrangement whereby he returns to the editorship of Belford's Magazine, which he left two years ago.

Charles A. Richardson, for thirty-five years managing editor of the Congregationalist, died January 18 at Hotel Bellevue, Boston.

Charles T. Congdon, the "Paul Potter" of the Boston Courier, and editorial writer for twenty-five years on the New York Tribune, died January 18 at Hotel Albert, New York, aged sixty-eight.

The literary alliance of H. Rider Haggard and W. H. Ballou is authoritatively announced. In case of a failure to pass the proposed international copyright law, these authors have agreed to share each other's literary labors, to have their names jointly on their future novels, to copyright for each other in England and the United States, to share each other's royalties or sales, and to meet in San Francisco about March for a continental tour together, and to write a novel jointly in case the copyright law passes and the above necessities are obviated.

The mother of Robert Louis Stevenson keeps a mighty scrap-book, in which she has gathered everything that has been written concerning her son. On the title-page of the scrap-book these lines are inscribed, "Speak weel o' my love, Speak ill o' my love, But aye be speaking o' him." Mrs. Stevenson is a most agreeable Scotch lady, and the celebrated author of "Treasure Island" is her only son. She is about to join her son and his wife in Samoa, where Mr. Stevenson says he means to end his days. He has closed out all his affairs in England and Scotland.

Douglas Sladen, the collector of Australian poetry, has taken up his residence till May at No. 20 East Thirty-second street, New York. He is collecting materials for a book on "Literary New York," which will embrace not only the well-known authors, but the literary clubs, salons, libraries, principal magazines, and the great newspapers, with their publishers, editors, leader-writers, critics, etc. The work, which is to be published both in London and New York, will be embellished with portraits of the chief personages, and will contain an historical chapter.

Mrs. Rohlfs (Anna Katharine Green) has just returned from Europe.

It is proposed that the new Southern magazine shall be published in Atlanta, and that it shall be edited by Joel Chandler Harris, James R. Randall, or Richard Malcolm Johnston.

May Alden Ward, the author of a work on Dante which has been highly praised, has recently completed "Petrarch: a Sketch of His Life and Works," which Roberts Brothers will publish this month.

"Women Poets" of the Victorian age, with an introduction and brief biographical notes by Mrs. William Sharp, is the latest issue of the cheap but well-printed and admirably edited Canterbury Poets Series.

Edwin Lasseter Bynner, the talented novelist, sailed from Boston to Nassau, in the Bahamas, February 12, to collect materials and local color for a new novel, in which the war of 1812 will play a prominent part.

Miss Louise Dodge, the author of "The Guardians" and "A Question of Identity," returned to England at New Year's for the collaboration with her aunt, Miss H. W. Preston, of a series of papers for the Atlantic and Century.

Charles Henry Lüders, the young poet who died in Philadelphia January 21, had printed only one collection of verses, "Hello, my Fancy!" During the past year he had been revising his later poems, with the idea of making a new volume. It is hoped that his friends will issue this.

Thackeray's complete works in an edition de luxe, limited to 1,000 copies, beautifully illustrated, will be published by Estes & Lauriat February 15. Estes & Lauriat also purpose to issue, March 20, Bulwer-Lytton's complete works in thirty-two volumes, in an equally beautiful style.

A new edition of Shelley's complete poetical works in one volume, edited by Professor Dowden, that discriminating and scholarly critic, has just been brought out by MacMillan & Co. In a thoughtful introduction by the editor, Professor Dowden gives the life of Shelley and a brief statement of the conditions which inspired the more important poems.

An interesting and spicy article on "The Stanley Controversy," by J. Rose Troup, one of Stanley's rear-guard officers, will appear in the March North American. The author's book, "The Story of the Rear Column," Messrs. Chapman & Hall, publishers, has passed into the second edition.

The editorial and all other departments of the Household, for so many years at Brattleboro, Vt., have been removed to 50 Bromfield street, Boston. The typography of the paper is by C. H. Simonds & Co., who have printed for many years the Youth's Companion, Watchman, Golden Rule, and other journals.

Kinglake, the author of "The Crimea," who has recently died, was distinguished by his industry. He writes, "I was constantly finding out that new facts quite changed the proportion of things; often a quantity of work had to be done over again because it had been begun at the wrong end." Yet, indomitable historian that he was, never did he shirk his work.

The Strand Magazine, the new London monthly, has made a decided hit. A novel idea, and entertaining as well, was the exhibition on one page of four or five portraits of a literary celebrity, Rider Haggard appearing first as a baby-boy in petticoats, and so on until his maturity was reached. The alterations in Swinburne's face from youth to maturity were very remarkable.

The new "Cyclopedia of National Biography " is being prepared in New York. The editor is James R. Gilmore, better known to the literary world under the nom de plume of "Edmund Kirke." The work will contain sketches of every man and woman of prominence in America from data personally gathered from the most reliable sources. There will be six large octavo volumes, each volume containing nearly 1,000 pages.

William Carew Hazlitt, who contributes those charming and hitherto unpublished letters of Charles and Mary Lamb to the February Atlantic, is a grandson of the essayist Hazlitt, Lamb's friend, and has himself published a life of Lamb, with letters.. The new material which Mr. Hazlitt furnishes to the Atlantic has some very curious letters from Lamb. One of the most characteristic notes of condolence written to Thomas Hood, on the death of his child, after many expressions of grief, ends with the extraordinary sentence, “I have won sexpence of Moxom by the sex of the dear gone one."

The home of Miss Olive Schreiner, whose "Story of an African Farm" made her famous, is in a beautiful suburb of Capetown. It is an oasis in a veritable South African desert, but skill and thrift have made the few hundred acres that comprise the town site blossom like the rose. Outside there are flat and desolate wastes of never ending sand.

VOL. III.

THE YOUNG NOVELIST. Walter Besant.

ROOTS FOR
AN AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE.
Walt Whitman.

31

33

In the January issue of THE AUTHOR a contributor makes some excellent suggestions upon the hygienic necessities of brain-workers, which also apply to all whose occupations are of a sedentary character. The importance of pure air, proper exercise, and simple, nourishing food was well set forth, as were also the injurious effects of stimulants, narcotics, and irregular habits. While a careful observance of physical hygienic rules is important, there is another and deeper realm of causation which deserves attention, and which is generally unappreciated or ignored. Never before so much as at the present time has there been a thorough search for primary, or ultimate, causes as distinguished from those which are secondary. Does the body build the vital forces, or vice versa? Does the brain build the mind, or are

No. 3.

the cells of the former constructed by the energy of the higher immaterial part? If mental conditions find more or less perfect expression through physical results, then a study of mental hygiene becomes highly important. In the degree that a mental worker is able to dwell upon a harmonious plane of thought somewhat above the worries, depressions, anxieties, and fears which pertain to the sensuous part, he will find that such mental harmony tends toward outward expression, which is health upon the physical plane. A simple recognition of the fact of mental causation as primary is helpful. In a degree it restores the normal reign of the higher over the lower. It aids in making the ideal real.

If one realizes that anger poisons the blood and deranges every secretion; that fear paralyzes the nervous system; that grief shrivels every tissue, and that worry stops digestion, he, at least, will make an effort to harmonize mental conditions in order to avoid the physical result, if not from higher motives. The dyspeptic thinks of his stomach, and the more his thought is upon it the more keenly sensitive it becomes. The healthy man, except as a matter of theory, does not know that he has such an organ. There is profound philosophy in the injunction: "Take no thought for your body"; that is, look upon it merely as an expression of the real man which is back of it. When thus subordinated it becomes harmonious instead of tyrannical. It is like a printed page which interprets the quality and volume of preceding thought in visible

characters. Let us accustom ourselves to look upon health as normal, and upon disease,