five per cent to the cost of most things used in our great cities.

This is a percentage worth thinking of now that times are supposed to be so hard. There is a story that Chief Justice Marshall, of the United States Supreme Court, always went to market in person and carried his marketbasket home. When it was suggested that this practice was inconsistent with the dignity of the position he occupied, he is said to have replied that it was his duty to inculcate economy by example.

If men and women of prominence would take the same view of their obligations today, the effect would be most salutary. In New York City most of the ordinary household buying is now done over the telephone. Each telephone call costs three cents; to this should be added the cost of delivery at ten cents per package. If we consider the higher prices and short weight for which such methods give an opportunity, we should probably find that at least twenty to twenty-five per cent is added to the cost of living in most households as a result of sheer laziness. The hard times are felt most keenly by the so-called middle class, which is the class in which this disregard of the fundamentals of economy is most general.

Fire Insurance Profits for the year 1913 are the subject of a very interesting tabulation prepared by the Connecticut Insurance Department. This statement shows that the fire insurance companies in the United States, reporting to the State of Connecticut, made a net profit of $6,353,440, upon an earned underwriting income of

This result certainly does not sustain the theory that fire insurance companies are making an excessive profit. No important conflagration occurred during the year under review. The underwriting profit is, nevertheless, only about two and one-quarter per cent upon the gross amount of earned premiums, and these premiums were paid to secure indemnity against destruction by fire of property valued at nearly $50,000,000,000. This showing makes it easy to understand why the amount of American capital invested in the fire insurance business is not increasing. It also lends fresh emphasis to the need of finding some way in which to reduce the enormous and unnecessary waste by fire in the United States. To the actual loss must be added the expense of getting people to insure and maintaining the machinery of insurance; the total economic waste is probably not less than four hundred million dollars a year. It is generally admitted that the ease with which insurance is obtainable is an encouragement to what may be described as "passive arson" through carelessness, and a law which would make it impossible for any one to insure property for its full value would seem to be the first step necessary in any reform.

A

S the Spectator was walking over what the truth compels him to declare was a somewhat slushy winter landscape he met one of his neighbors, a landscape painter, near whom it is the Spectator's happy fortune to live. A talkbeginning with those most comfortable bromides, indifferent inquiries about each other's health-had drifted to the beauty of the surrounding woods and fields, and the artist spoke with keen enthusiasm of a few winter sketches in which he had found great delight. But," he went on, "" an artist can make these only for his own pleasure.

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So

far as the public is concerned—the public that buys pictures-winter hardly exists. Only at long intervals will anybody buy a picture of anything but spring or summer."

Now the Spectator had supposed that the superabundance of verdant landscapes was due partly to the fact that artists, like the rest of us, suffered from the weather, and could not carry on their outdoor sketching when the thermometer was low. But apparently there is another cause—a fashion in landscape buying. But, assuming that it is city dwellers who buy pictures, this

prejudice against wintry landscapes should not be, for the inhabitant of the city is well fitted, perhaps best fitted, to see the beauty of the winter landscape.

Strangely enough, the city dweller is even more likely than the all-the-year-round countryman to enjoy the freshness of vision for which the student of landscape must consciously strive-the ability to see things as they are--which artists assure the Spectator is so great a rarity, even among themselves, that it goes far alone to make that rare thing, a colorist. Of course, if this gift is enjoyed by the city man (and it is the Spectator's belief that he is most apt to possess it), it is probably due to the lack of familiarity contemplated by the old darky's saying, "Too much o' freedery breed despise." The real countryman, who makes a living out of landscape without the intermediary of canvas and colors, sees in it a sort of practical machine for the production of crops. To him the daisy in the fields is not even a daisy and nothing more; it is a pestiferous weed. Scotland's dauntless emblem is to him as relentless an enemy as were the old Highlanders who overflowed their borders on cattle-lifting expeditions.

But the Spectator and his fortunate fellows whose vegetables seem to them to come from the grocers, and whose live stock issues from the butcher shop, do not see nature through utility's veil. Nor do they see it so constantly as to lose the freshness of eye that can respond to the more delicate vibrations of natural color. It is in winter that this faculty is most valuable. When blossoms are vying with one another in issuing invitations to the insect world and hanging out their natural posters, when every plant is carryİng on its manufacturing or chemical industries, even the dullest must be sensible of that spirit of life that expresses itself in vigorous coloring. In the winter, however, nature cares nothing about attracting your attention. She is wearing her old clothes, from motives of economy. There is a lull in her business while she waits for better times. Therefore she has put aside her most distinctive hues and colorings, and remains, like the old French abbé, satisfied if at the end of a revolution she can sum up her achievement by saying, "I have lived through it."

The Spectator begs any city dweller who takes a journey, by commutation or otherwise, to put aside his magazine or paper and glance afield as the landscape is unrolled before him. Let him take the trouble to note the colors of the distant woods against the horizon; let him try to name the shades by which the leafless branches outline themselves against the sky. If these are shadowed, he may be surprised to find that the name of one hue will suit them quite as well as that of another. If they are in light, against a darkened sky, he will learn a new gamut in grayness.

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As for earth's carpet, no one who has ever compared the winter's field coloring with summer's green (having in mind only color) can hesitate to award the palm of beauty to the dried grasses. If to these two broad shades one will add the wide range of winter skies, with their more frequent clouds and greater massing, he will have the material for an artistic kaleidoscope that will prove a fount of overflowing delight. The Spectator will not be deterred by triteness from speaking of this coloring as in a minor key, and he claims for it all the fascination that music finds in this most emotional region.

If the smile of Mona Lisa finds other expression than in her face, might not its nearest resemblance be found in a winter landscape, where everything is hinted, and nothing fully expressed except the sense of repose and invitation ?

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Lest the Spectator be misunderstood, he wishes here to correct the impression that he may have said that city dwellers are more appreciative of these delicate tones and shades than are their brethren of the country. He has said only that he believes them more capable of appreciation if they will but look around them. To love outdoor nature the Spectator believes is possible to all finely organized persons, but he does not believe that the love is spontaneous. It must be awakened by one who, carrying the torch, hands it to a younger runner in the race; and he therefore appeals to all who have power to awaken this faculty in the young, that they neglect no opportunity to implant. the beginning of that delight in natural beauty which will be a lifelong pleasure and one beyond the caprices of fortune.

A LIFE OF FLORENCE

NIGHTINGALE1

In the words of Benjamin Jowett, her friend and correspondent for more than thirty years, it was the fate of Florence Nightingale to become a legend" in her lifetime. Two large volumes are none too large to record the activities of this many-sided woman. Early in her girlhood she found but small space for her aspirations, and her plaints, though sometimes whimsical, are sincere. The wealth and position of her family provided every opportunity possible in those days for education, travel, and social gayeties. When she was only seventeen, she was introduced into Continental social and political circles, and responded to the stimulus with all her intellectual vigor. Feeling within herself a "call" to some service more than that offered in her own home, she finally overcame the opposition of her conventional parents and took short terms of instruction in Kaiserswerth and later in Paris in nursing-her chosen work. Born in 1820, she was not the enthusiastic, untrained young lady, the mystic devotee of sentimental imagination, when at the age of thirty-four she responded to the call of the Government and conducted forty women nurses to the seat of the Crimean War. She was truly a "ministering angel," but she also deserved the characteristic praise of Queen Victoria"Such a clear head, I wish we had her at the War Office." The next best thing in her life was her close connection with Sydney Herbert, at that time "Secretary at War," and her wise and powerful friend in all her enterprises until his death. Her Crimean experiences were only the prelude to long years of practical work for the benefit of the army, most of it conducted from the seclusion of an invalid chamber. Her advice was sought by statesmen; she was the patron saint and practical organizer of modern nursing; her interest in and plans for the English army in India and elsewhere have left indelible impress upon the century. Apart from the public aspect of her life, rejoices to find, somewhat unexpectedly, all through these most interesting chapters that the Lady of the Lamp " had a keen sense of humor, a biting irony, a gift of hitting off

one

Life of Florence Nightingale. By Sir Edward Cook. In two vols. The Macmillan Company, New York. $7.50.

peculiarities in her friends and foes, and was We cannot altogether distinctly human. We speak too highly of the work of her biographer. His task was complex and enormous, as he tells us that Miss Nightingale was a "hoarder" and kept every scrap of paper that came into her hand. The summing up of her character and career by the author is noticeably fine and discriminating. It tempts one to quotation almost beyond resistance. Florence Nightingale was no plaster saint. . . She knew that to do good work it requires a hard head as well as a soft heart. She found no use for angels without hands."" She preferred the literature of fact to that of imagination. 'Wondering," she said, "is like yawning, and leaves the same sensation behind it, and should never be allowed except when people are very much exhausted.”

This wonderful woman died in 1910, aged ninety years, leaving a legacy to the world which she put into words for one of her fellow-workers: "All are better off than if he had not lived; and this betterness is for always, it does not die with him-that is the true estimate of a great Life."

Chance. By Joseph Conrad. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.35.

For subtlety of art no one now writing fiction approaches Conrad. Whether this is praise or blame depends on the reader's point of view. Mr. F. P. Adams, the humorist, in his "Tribune" column lately asked to be told why it is that he doesn't care for Conrad when he knows that he ought to care for him. Probably the reason is that Mr. Adams is a humorist and Conrad hasn't, in this book at least, a glimmer of humor in his way of looking at life. He is no more involved and indirect in his narrative than Mr. De Morgan, but how different are their two books lately published, "Chance" and "When Ghost Meets Ghost"! A little cheerfulness would have made "Chance" an easier book to read.

But, apart from Mr. Conrad's preternatural solemnity in creating and analyzing characters, his workmanship is of the finest. Little by little in this story the contact of chance circumstances upon the life of an almost friendless girl, a convict's daughter, molds her character and reacts upon others. If the reader's attention is slow to arouse, once fairly engaged, it becomes increasingly intense to the end.

In the skilled use of language to produce a planned effect Conrad is a past-master, and this is the more remarkable in that he did not know

a word of English until he was nineteen-he is a Pole by birth (Joseph Conrad Korzniowski was his name originally). His first story," Almayer's Folly," was published when he was thirty-eight years old and after a long period of life at sea, which he has utilized so skillfully in "The Children of the Sea" (known in England as "The Nigger of the Narcissus ') and in most of his other stories, including, to some extent, his new story," Chance." One critic-and perhaps critics of the first order have been the warmest admirers of Mr. Conrad's achievement -has summed him up as "a man of keen observation, delicate perception and subtle intelligence, a unique training and experience, and withal a complete mastery over our language." Dodo's Daughter. By E. F. Benson. The Century Company, New York. $1.35.

It is twenty years since the author made a sensation with his "Dodo." The book was talked of partly because it was alleged that some of its characters were taken from life, partly because Dodo was rather more than unconventional in her irresponsible talk. In the critical opinion of the day, the story was not so much immoral as fashionably improper. But that "Dodo" was likable and amusing no one ever denied. She is still so in Mr. Benson's new story-far more than her over-sophisticated and excessively modern daughter. "Dodo" still talks with lively inconsequence, and sometimes about things not commonly made the subject of general conversation. It is as if she had a prankish humor in shocking people. But there is no great harm in her; nor is there in the younger set now introduced, except that they rather tire and displease by their strained efforts to appear blasé and clever.

Penrod. By Booth Tarkington. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.25.

Penrod is called by various people in the story "the Worst Boy in Town," but he isn't, manifold as are his delinquencies. He is just boy. His scrapes and enterprises are the individual outworkings of universal boyishness. It sounds very solemn to say that the book's psychology is true, for one reads the story for its fun; but the fun wouldn't be half as "fetching if it were not based on a genuine knowledge of boy nature. Mr. Tarkington has written more ambitious stories, but never one more amusing. Felicidad. By Rowland Thomas. Little, Brown & Co., New York. $1.25.

Landing casually from his prau for a night's stay on a little Pacific isle, the name of which, being interpreted, is Happiness, the hero of this charming and romantic tale finds all that is desirable-peace, comfort, friends, love; and in Felicidad he is content to make his home, to enjoy its simple pleasures, and to become one of its unambitious and gentle people. The spell of Felicidad is upon the reader as it was upon Don John. Mr. Thomas reproduces ex

quisitely the languid delight of his imagined island.

Ladyship's Conscience (Her). By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $1.25.

There is a quantity of good talk, often verging upon the improbable in its forced cleverness, in the new novel by this popular writer. The difficult task undertaken-to make the reader concede the attractiveness of the heroine -is accomplished, but no one can go so far as to accept the solution of the love affair of her ladyship without incredulous smiles. The noble family of mother and two daughters present individual characteristics that are amusing and true to life, but the machine-made plot is too much for mortal mind.

Our Mr. Wrenn. By Sinclair Lewis. Harper & Brothers, New York. $1.

A promising story by a new writer. At times it reminds one of Mr. H. G. Wells when in his younger writing days he described the life of a draper's assistant, at times of O. Henry because Mr. Lewis has the knack of making New York in its ordinarily humdrum aspects alive and interesting. There is no imitation, however. Mr. Lewis has his own methods of realism, and there is more than a hint of the romantic disposition underneath the outwardly commonplace nature of "our Mr. Wrenn." Constructively the story is unsatisfactory, but it certainly arouses attention-and expectation also. Storm. By Wilbur Daniel Steele. Harper & Brothers, New York. $1.25.

This storm rises to a cyclone before the hero wins his maid. Portuguese life on and off Cape Cod is picturesquely described by the author, who must have seen with his own eyes the sand dunes and mingled with the crowds of fishermen in the narrow village streets. Joe Manta is a big hero, and shoulders his way through life after primitive fashion.

Fool of April. By Justin Huntly McCarthy. The John Lane Company, New York. $1.35. The theme of this novel is one that Walter Besant would have dealt with in a charmingly fantastic way; Mr. McCarthy handles it too realistically and at too great length. A middleaged, staid London bank clerk receives a legacy of £24,000 from a man he never heard of, with the condition that he spend it all in a year in living the life of a fashionable man of the world under the guidance of a young clubman. He comes out of the ordeal very creditably, on the whole, because he is a man of good sense and a good heart.

Beckoning Land (The). By E. Alexander Powell. The Caldwell-Sites Company, Roanoke, Virginia. 50c.

Mr. Powell writes enthusiastically of the claims and advantages of Roanoke and of the beautiful Virginia mountain country near by. The booklet is remarkably well illustrated with

reproduced photographs, several of which are printed in color. Both in pictorial and readable qualities this is an exceptionally well done piece of work of its class.

Ægean Days. By J. Irving Manatt. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $3.

This volume has atmosphere of a kind very satisfactory to the classical scholar and instructive to the man in the street. For instance:

The dismal daybreak cooled even the youngest ardor and gave me what I coveted-an almost unbroken day at home with Homer. Over the best fire mine host could provide-alas! it was no ten-foot-through Homeric hearth, piled high with blazing logs, but only a battered tin bathtub filled with hot ashes and embers-I bent me to the delightful task of reading all the Ithacan story on Ithacan soil. The task was done when at five o'clock the masters of the Hellenic School dropped in to afternoon coffee. Over the cups we discussed the South African War to please them, and to please us they took turns at rhapsodizing snatches of their own poet.

The day's reading had rounded to its proper close my Ithacan pilgrimage. I had lived over the whole great story from Athene-Mentes' first appearance to the final brush with the suitors' friends. I had followed Odysseus' every step from his landing here, fast asleep, until the gray-eyed goddess stayed his red right hand. And, taking due note of dawns and sunsets, I found the Poet had given him just five days for the whole business-ere he need fare forth again where landlubbers should mistake his oar for a winnowing fan. We, too, had done Ithaca in five days, and were content to re-embark on the prompt little Pylaros as the sun went down and launch out again on the wet ways. The particular value of the present volume over other books on Greece is twofold. First of all, as is shown by the above extract, the Homeric thread runs through the text, and gives to it a certain backbone and fiber. In the second place, however, to jump from the most ancient to the most modern time, we find the author apparently as much saturated by the political and literary and artistic present condition of Greece as he was by the conditions of the Homeric age. Hence his references to the present development of Greece are of special interest and worth. Professor Manatt is the friend of the Greeks. He is fascinated by the ancient and heroic period of their history, but he is intensely interested in modern Greece. His book is, in large degree, a defense of the Greece of to-day, and one strong reason for his defense is that he believes in the continuity of the old and the new culture. It is a pity that his text has not had the advantage, as it should have had, of adequate illustration. There are illustrations in the book, it is true, but their reproduction leaves much to be desired.

Russia of the Russians. By Harold Whitmore Williams, Ph.D. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.500

One of the most informative books in an excellent series instructs us concerning Russia, especially its trade, peasants, press, bureaucracy, Church, literature, art, and, in particular, its "intelligentsia." The explanation of the intelligentsia forms what to us is the book's chief feature. An "intelligent," or member of the intelligentsia, says Dr. Williams, is not merely

an "intellectual." The "intellectuals" of other countries enter more or less completely into the life of their environment and conform to its customs. But the life of the Russian intelligentsia has been a protest against the existing order. Thus the distinguishing quality of the intelligentsia was not that its members wrote books. For instance, Tolstoy was not an "intelligent," because the intelligentsia habit of mind, according to Dr. Williams, was repugnant to him. The author continues:

Turgenev, again, was not an intelligent. He was keenly interested in the intelligentsia, associated with, and frequently described in his novels, its members. . But Turgeniev described them as an outsider, as a highly cultivated country gentleman who would never quite consent to identify himself with the intelligentsia class. Dostoievsky, again, was and was not an intelligent. He was a townsman, and lived, like a typical intelligent, a restless, hand-to-mouth, irregular life.

The qualities necessary to the intelligentsia were fervor to an ideal of political and social redemption and contempt for the goods of this world. While the result was, in many instances, a dogmatic, narrow, censorious, and intolerant spirit, the effect of any lofty and disinterested thinking must be of value in the remaking of Russia.

Passing of Empire (The). By H. FieldingHall. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $2.50.

The title of the present volume seems unfortunate, for one is not sure what Empire is meant. But the subject of the volume is quickly revealed-India. The book differs from other books on that country because it is not a description of the characteristics of its people as contrasted with those of other peoples so much as a discussion of the destiny of India. In order to understand this, the author spends a good deal of time in filling in a proper historic background. He then projects a foreground into the picture very different in character from that already sketched. He shows us how different the new civilian in India is from the old, how different his training, how different the laws, whether criminal or civil, and what changes are taking place in village and municipal government and in education. The author's aim in writing this book has evidently been to show that England's duty is not to make of India a subject but a daughter. He admits that it has required great courage and ability and selfsacrifice to conquer India, but he shows that the freedom of the people needs the yet greater application of courage and self-sacrifice. As to the natives, race, caste, and creed, as the author says, have ruined India, and are still ruining her. If a new India is to arise, these things must be sacrificed. The question is, Will they be sacrificed? Mr. Fielding-Hall indicates the reforms necessary to transform the country's politics, economics, and society. His book is timely both on the ideal and on the practical side. It unfortunately lacks an index.