author appears to forget that the dog is telling the story and reverts to a better style, which is a relief. Bobbs, Merrill Co.

"Love Under Fire," Randall Parrish's latest novel, is a light, readable story of the Civil War in which the principal parts are taken by one of Sheridan's young lieutenants and a piquant little Southerner who carries despatches between Beauregard and Johnston. The movements of armies concern the plot but little, but there is some vigorous fighting around the old mansion-house in which the hero has taken prisoner the heroine, her father, and her fiancé, when a relieving force of Confederates attacks them there. Full-page illustrations in color are contributed by Alonzo Kimball. C. McClurg & Co.

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An admirable historical novel of the best popular type is "The Path of Glory," in which Paul Leland Haworth embellishes skilfully a plot that follows the French and Indian War for the five years including the defeat of Braddock and the fall of Quebec, with an imaginary love-affair between the daughter of a French commandant and one of the Virginia Randolphs. has availed himself freely, but not indiscriminately, of the picturesque possibilities of the period, and has bestowed a care on his character-drawing which one does not always find in stories where romance and adventure play so large a part. He has been particularly successful in describing the perils of the frontier-life of the time, and the fate of little Barnaby Currin, carried away by Indians from his home in the Shenandoah Valley, will hold the interest of some readers as closely as that of the fascinating Alfrède, apparently doomed to be the bride of her lover's bitterest enemy. Little, Brown & Co.

In a volume upon "The Business of Congress" Mr. Samuel W. McCall, representative in Congress from the 8th Massachusetts district, publishes with some revisions and additions the substance of a course of lectures which he delivered at Columbia University some months ago. No more illuminating volume upon Congressional procedure has been written or is likely to be. Mr. McCall was a journalist before he was a Congressman, and the combined training has given him an unusually clear and forcible style and a proper sense of proportion. From nearly twenty years' experience in the House he has gained familiarity with all details of Congressional business; and there is not a step in the process by which projected legislation finds its slow and difficult way to the statutebook which is not accurately described in these pages. The book makes an admirable companion to Sir Courtenay P. Ilbert's just-published history of Parliament, and like that, is not only interesting for present reading but extremely useful for reference. Columbia University Press: Lemcke & Buechner, New York, sales agents.

In "Old Reliable" Mr. Harris Dickson presents an old negro in many mirth-provoking experiences. His laziness and his lying seem to be incurable, but despite his many faults, his perpetual good nature, fertility in resource, and ingratiating manner, make friends for him. Fortune favors him through many tight places and his escapades and trials are very amusingly portrayed, the best chapters, perhaps, being those that tell of his employment by Col. Spottiswoode, a southern planter whose understanding of the devious ways of the typical southern darky is complete. Old Reliable's testimony as a court witness, his experiences as the Colonel's agent in securing workers for the plantation, the

hunt, conducted by the Colonel, at which Old Reliable assists, are some of the more ludicrous incidents. When, by an accident, Old Reliable "saves the country" by saving a bursting levee from disaster and the grateful planters give him a home for his declining years one finds oneself smiling indulgently at his closing remark that "dey mout a' throwed in a nigger to work some of dis lan' for me." Bobbs, Merrill Co.

Professor A. S. Mackenzie, head of the department of English and Comparative Literature in the State University of Kentucky, is the author of a work on "The Evolution of Literature" which is constructed upon altogether new lines. It is a study of comparative literature, but in a broader sense than is usually given to that term; for the author treats the study of literary art as one of the subdivisions of anthropology, and in the pursuit of this study compares drama with drama, lyric with lyric, narrative with narrative, beginning with the primitive literatures of Africa, Oceania, Asia and America, and the primitive dance and drama, lyric and narration, as found among the peoples of those continents and then passing in review and subjecting to comparison the barbaric literature of the same divisions, thus leading to a study of the various forms of literature as they developed, first under autocratic and then under democratic conditions. Much the larger part of the work is devoted to the earlier branches of the study,-tribal literature in its primitive and barbaric forms; but this is not to be regretted, since these are the least familiar departments of inquiry. There is no lack of manuals in which the literatures of civilization are compared; but the thoroughness of research which carries the investigation, in this volume,

as near as may be to the beginnings, and traces in different quarters of the globe and among different tribes the same tendencies toward expression makes this work unique and peculiarly suggestive. The book is prepared with a view both to general reading and to classroom use, and is fully indexed. T. Y. Crowell & Co.

"The War Maker," by Horace Smith, purports to be the true story of the adventures of Captain George B. Boynton, a soldier of fortune, who died a few months ago in New York after a life-time devoted to adventure for adventure's sake. Serving at different times under eighteen different flags, and bearing a number of different names which he does not think it necessary to record, Captain Boynton distinguished himself as a professional filibuster, buccaneer, and promoter of revolutions in Latin America. There is material for a dozen romances of adventure in the narrative which Captain Boynton confided to Mr. Smith toward the close of his life, not the least thrilling of which is the story of his brief association with a beautiful pirate queen in the China Sea. Captain Boynton told his tale, apparently, without the slightest qualms of conscience, and only with "scorn for sympathy and contempt for criticism." In Hayti, in Venezuela, in Brazil and in other hotbeds of Latin-American revolution, and again in Africa and in China and in Europe, he followed his thirst for adventure as if war and peril were his manifest destiny, only to die peacefully in his bed at last, at the age of sixtynine. The editor of the narrative explains that Boynton-whose real name, by the way, was not Boynton,-was the original of Richard Harding Davis' "Soldier of Fortune." A. C. McClurg & Co.

We will sail those secret sea-ways which no keel has ever partedOh, hard shall be our portion, but we'll never more come home.

Never more come home, till the winds are tired of battle,

Hanging weary pinions, storm-draggled, wet with rain;

Then we'll gather in the harvest, and we'll watch the sheep and cattle, And card the wool, and feed the flocks, and live with you again; But the ships are straining seaward where the winds have flown before us

(Laughing high amid the clouds, they called us as they flew.) Can we pause, can we linger, when the winds and seas implore us?

Oh! when the winds turn home again we'll come again to you. Margaret Sackville.

A year ago, no one would have dreamed of discussing such a question. To-day, it is the underlying thought of a large part of all discussion of Canada's future; and it has forced its way into not a little open debate. It has been the subject of hundreds of leading articles in the Canadian newspapers; it is the purpose of most of the perorating in the Canadian Parliament; it has been many times openly proclaimed as the settled policy of the only nation which can draw Canada out of the Empire in the National Congress of that nation. Even the Chief Executive of that nation has publicly called attention to the fact that "the bond uniting the Dominion with the Mother Country is light and almost imperceptible.”

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Thus far have we travelled in one short year. The separation of Canada from the British Empire has passed from an impossibility, worth talking about, into a subject of open debate in the Canadian Parliament and Press and in the American Congress and Press; and what was an absurdity last June is an apprehension throughout the British world this June.

Now what foundation is there for all this discussion? The friends of Reciprocity insist that the opponents of that proposal have wantonly dragged the sacred subject of Canada's relations to the Empire into what is, in fact, no more than a party squabble. They say that Reciprocity is a step away from Annexation rather than one toward it, in that it will make Canadians more prosperous and so more independent; and they accuse us of deliberately and without reasonable justification blowing up the Annexationist "bugaboo" because we know that even a suspicion of Annexationist tendency

would be enough to damn any policy in the minds of our people. That is, they charge us with criminal insincerity-indeed, with something very like sacrilege. So far as I know, the opponents of Reciprocity do not return the accusation. They grant the sincere loyalty of its advocates.

It is not, however, a question of personal sincerity-it is a problem in political probabilities. Let us begin by dissolving the problem into its elements and discovering its chief factors. First, I should put down without any hesitation the intentions of the American people. Do they mean Annexation? This ought not to be a difficult question for a people of the same stockthe people of the United Kingdom-to answer. What would the British people mean if they were in the same position as the Americans, and had a rich, undeveloped, sparsely populated and yet highly civilized country dividing the North American continent with them? What is the use of playing the hypocrite? Men of our blood are born Annexationists. The British people have been "annexing" everything loose for centuries, and although they are suffering from "land dyspepsia" to day, the habit is so strong that they inadvertently lay an itching palm from time to time on such inconsiderable trifles as the Soudan, Thibet, a choice bit of Persia, another section of the Dark Continent. We do not want these countries. Oh, dear no. We will not take them. We merely cast our shoe over them, and we would like to see any European rival lay a covetous finger on the fringe of their outer garment-that is all.

Now the Americans are made of the same stuff. They have been "annexing" territory ever since they began business a century ago at a fairly cred