a hero, has already been presented in two earlier books, "The Early History of Jacob Stahl" and "A Candidate for Truth." "The Invisible Event" brings him to marriage, success as an author, with a suggestion that his spiritual life may be taken up later. To call this group of books a trilogy would be, perhaps, to over-emphasize, not its seriousness, but its importance; but just now the trilogy habit seems to have invaded English fiction. Mr. Bennett has given us Clayhanger," "Hilda Lessways," and has indicated his intention to add a third volume; Mr. Onions has launched a trilogy on the world; while "Jean Christophe," in France, is a masterpiece of elaborate detail presented in the form of fiction.

rector.

Mr. Beresford is the son of an English He passed through a public school into an architect's office. In 1903 he made a curious exchange of professions, from architecture to life insurance; and he finally became a branch manager for the New York Life Insurance Company, a position which he held for a very short time. He has been a book reviewer for the " Literary World " and the "Academy," and his career in fiction began when he secured a position ́on the "Westminster Gazette," which gave him more leisure.

Jacob Stahl persuades an unsophisticated and hard-working young woman, the daughter of an English rector, who is trying to support herself, to leave her work as a partner in a boarding-house in London and become his partner in a little house down in Devonshire. Incidentally, Jacob's wife is still living and there has been no divorce. The story of the mental struggle through which the young woman passes is told with great minuteness. Jacob has no scruples; he is entirely emancipated. He is in many ways an extremely shabby creature; but the young woman loves him and builds him up until he attains a certain dignity of character. the story ends, he has married her and become the father of a child and feels that life is really beginning.

about Jacob Stahl's sex morality he has none. The story quietly assumes that the seventh commandment has been outgrown ; and this slurring of the moral element robs the work of some of the younger novelists of one great element of tragedy.

The author of "The Beloved,"1 a story of a young girl of the gutter and the cabaret, must not be confused with the author of "The Double Traitor." Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim understands the trick of making a readable book. He has the mechanism of the interesting story at his fingers' ends, and his aim seems to be to entertain people. Mr. James Oppenheim, on the other hand, strikes the reader as being in earnest and treats his art as a very serious matter. "The Beloved" tells the history in very plain terms of a young girl picked up in a cabaret by a young man who is seeking adventures in New York. There is in her the essential principle of goodness which has been blurred. but not lost in her irresponsible, wayward life. There grows between them a pure love like a lily out of the muck. The man is an idealist; the girl is a very fallible human woman in process of development, but she responds to the stimulus of affection and is lifted above herself by her devotion and by the faith of a man who sees the best that is in her and appeals to it.

This is not a story for children; a good deal of it is rhapsodical; but it is apparently a sincere study of character made for a worthy purpose.

"The Beloved" is an illustration of the fact that romance does not depend upon surroundings. Nothing could be more sordid and, in a way, more offensive than the circumstances which surround the central figure in "The Beloved;" but the story of her redemption is a romance pure and simple.

" 2

The analysis of character in this story is penetrating, searching, and extremely well done; but the reader often feels that it is overdone and that the book is an example of extraordinarily minute artistic work expended on very thin material. There is no question about the ability of the book; there is considerable question about the interest of certain parts of it; there is no question

The Beloved. By James Oppenheim. B. W. Huebsch, New York. $1.25.

2 Jaffery. By William J. Locke. The John Lane Company, New York. $1.35.

by the dramatic vitality of Jaffery, a berserker kind of man who as a newspaper reporter in Albania meets a berserker kind of woman. As a matter of friendship, he brings this woman, who is thrown upon his hands by the death of her husband, to England; and her willful and semi-savage unconventionality are very effectively brought out against an English background. It would be unfair to tell the story, which is full of delightful turns of thought and of phrase.

The author of "The Double Traitor "1 is a journalist in fiction and uses the motive of the German spy very effectively; he not only piques curiosity in a well-worked-out plot, but also gains whatever adventitious interest the events of the day lend to his story. Like most stories that are contrived, the plot dovetails too neatly; things happen as if the world existed for the express purpose of sup' plying stories of adventure with xciting and dramatically complete dénouements. But it is safe to say that few people who begin this story will lay it down until they finish it; and for the purposes of such a tale and to meet the need of the readers who rejoice in fiction of this kind the ending is precisely what it ought to be. The story, in a word, is an extremely skillful piece of mechanical fiction.

Mr. Marshall has constituted himself a kind of informal reporter of life in the English country house; and no life in England

Famous Days and Deeds in Holland and Belgium. By Charles Morris. The J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. $1.25.

The name of Charles Morris has long been familiar to those who like to read "history stories to themselves or to their children. Mr. Morris's "Historical Tales" has exactly supplied that need. He now publishes a similar volume which has to do only with Holland and Belgium, and is, of course, of particular interest at the present time. In it the ordinary reader will learn many things-as, for instance, that the old Batavians, the Hollanders of our day, after their conquest by the Romans, gave to the Roman armies a splendid exhibition of the daring which had steadily resisted those armies in the invasion of the Low Countries, so that it was due to Batavian hardihood at the Battle of Pharsalia that the tide turned in Cæsar's favor. Added to the chapters which recount picturesque events of the countries concerned, we come to their description at the present time, in which there seem to be certain inadvertences. The population of Liège, for

The Double Traitor. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston. $1.35.

is pleasanter, nor has any form of English life been more significant of English character. What Trollope has been to the cathedral, the deanery, and the rectory, Mr. Marshall has been to the country house. In his work, as in Trollope's, the chief qualities have been careful and painstaking studies of character, happy transcriptions of social habits, and the diffusions of atmosphere. In a word, Mr. Marshall has shown talent rather than genius; but his work has not therefore been any less valuable.

In his new story, "The House of Merrilees," Mr. Marshall has undertaken something for which neither his experience nor his peculiar gifts qualify him. He has written a story of mystery, a kind of detective tale. He has written it with all the elaboration and painstaking handling of detail which has characterized his earlier novels. But the novel of mystery must be written along broad lines, or it must be concentrated in tone and atmosphere (as in Poe's short stories), or it must move rapidly. Now "The House of Merrilees" does none of these. The plot is elaborate and complicated in the last degree; it is very slowly unfolded; a great deal of space is given to close characterization and description. It is, in fact, the application of the method of one kind of writing to material which demands another kind; and the result is an unsuccessful story.

instance, is indicated as thirty thousand, and the Emperor William is reported to have called the Belgian Treaty "a scrap of paper." Perhaps he did, but the saying is that of the Gelman Chancellor in his now celebrated interview with the British Ambassador on the night preceding the rupture of relations between England and Germany.

New International Year Book (The), 1914. Edited by Frank Moore Colby, M.A. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $5.

The volume of "The New International Year Book" for 1914 has now made its appearance. It follows the same excellent lines as have its predecessors. Of course the particular interest which will always attach to the present volume is its recounting of the beginning of the great war, and this involves a fuller treatment than usual of the history of foreign nations. There are also supplementary articles, such as those on military progress, naval progress, aeronautics, battle-ships, submarines, etc., which will be found of much value.

The House of Merrilees. By Archibald Marshall. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $1.35.

Ten years ago, says the Panama "Star and Herald," the small boys of the Canal Zone played at bull-fighting. Now they have lost their ambition to become slayers of bulls, and want to become great baseball players. The National game has followed the flag, conquering the brutal sport that preceded it.

The Panamanian boy has even translated baseball slang into Spanish, according to the “Herald.”. At a recent game, it says, " we heard a Panamanian boy say in Spanish, 'Bunt, man, bunt, now is the time to bunt.' The boy was right and the batter did it. No boy ever got more joy and excitement out of the death of a bull than that boy did out of that bunt."

The United States Public Health Service states that the expectation of life after the age of forty is less now than it was thirty years ago, owing largely to the increased prevalence of diseases of degeneration. It recommends, as a remedy for this state of things: "Take exercise. Have a hobby that gets you out of doors. Walk to your business, to your dressmaker's, keep chickens, make a garden, play golf or any other game, but take two hours' exercise every day."

"War-time housekeeping in Paris," says a writer in "American Cookery," "with a food supply bossed by a Board of Provisioners and a Food Censor, results in less cheating and more nearly ideal conditions than I have ever experienced before." Previous to the municipal regulation of the supply and sale of food there was chaos, but afterward there was secured "a reasonable and steady food supply for the city and a profitable market for the farmer."

What seems to be recklessness on the part of American house owners and builders in regard to the prevention of fire is brought out in the statement that within sixteen months at least eight fine country houses have been destroyed on Long Island. Two of these cost over $500,000 each.

The experienced letter-opener can detect the imitation personal letter at the first glance at the printed typewriting; to forestall the usual fate of such a letter a Philadelphia firm frankly begins its imitation letter thus: "This is not a typewritten letter, but far better, because it has taken hours of experience of expensive talent to write the information it contains, impossible in any letter dictated on the spur of the moment."

Edward Lasker, we are informed, who figured in the recent chess contest in New York City, is not, it is believed, related in any way to the celebrated Dr. Emanuel Lasker, "still considered rightfully as the greatest living chess player." Dr. Lasker is a resident of Berlin,

and as such is not taking part in any intertional chess tournaments at present. A correspondent further informs us that neither Capablanca nor Marshall lost a game in this contest; the first-named player drew two games, and the latter four, but neither met defeat.

"The largest check ever written in this city," says the New York " Sun," was drawn on the National City Bank yesterday by Kuhn, Loeb & Co. It was for between $62,000,000 and $63,000,000, and was payable to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company." In 1784, when the Bank of New York was chartered, its entire capital and that of the other two banks in the country would not have paid a thirtieth part of this check.

The "Old Trails Road" across the continent has been put in condition for use, about two million dollars having been spent on its improvement last year, according to Mr. A. L. Westgard, Director of Transcontinental Highways, National Highways Association. The road now takes a first place among transcontinental highways as regards surface condition, scenery, historic interest, and hotels. It follows the old National Pike, the Boone Lick Trail, and the Santa Fé Trail. Recent improvements, it is declared, have made even the bad stretches of road on this route to the Pacific Coast least comfortable " for motoring.

at

On the 1st of April, the Geneva "Tribune" says, speaking of the lighter side of war, a French aviator flying over a German camp let fall what appeared to be an immense bomb. His aim was good, and the German soldiers hastily scattered in all directions. There was no explosion, however, and when, after considerable time had elapsed, some soldiers gingerly approached the supposed bomb, it was discovered to be a large football, with a tag tied to it that read-" April Fool!"

A feature of Memorial Day in Boston's celebration was a parade of horses under the auspices of the Boston Work-Horse Relief Association. About two thousand horses were in line, and many were decorated with blue ribbons by the judges. One of these was "Black Jack," forty-two years old; another old horse, "Babe," twenty-eight years old, received a gold medal.

In The Outlook of May 26 pictures of two fine new collegiate buildings, the Academic Building of Johns Hopkins University and Taylor Hall at Vassar College, were printed. The architects of the new Johns Hopkins building were Messrs. Parker, Thomas & Rice, of Baltimore; Taylor Hall was designed by Messrs. Allen & Collens, of Boston, and the photograph of the latter edifice was taken by Professor George B. Shattuck, of Vassar.