that the line to Peking was cut and the message would have to go via Shanghai, Nagasaki, Vladivostok, and Irkutsk, and down through Mongolia to Peking; that In these ways the charm of our adventure died out; our hearts were chilled. Our Consul was said to disapprove of ladies attempting the trip. food and water enough for a possible twenty-four-hour journey, and joined the eager throng at the station. it would cost nine times the usual price News came that a car had been fired THE train was crowded; people sat on and take three or four days in transit. We said we did not wish to send it. We were to start in three days. The interval was taken up in arranging for our trunks to go how and when they could; getting consular stamps on declarations; buying pillows to bolster us against jouncings; ordering food and drink, dust-glasses, veils, and cold cream. It was thrilling. Adventure was in the air-around the corner. HEN at luncheons and tea parties THEN on. This was the last straw, and we gave up our places in the Ford. They were eagerly snatched by others braver or less cautious than we. As we said good-by to them and wished them good luck, and said how furious we should be with ourselves when we heard of their safe arrival, one of the men said, gayly, "We should, of course, get killed in order to justify your caution." They got through all right; but firing had begun before they reached the gates and the driver of the truck following them was shot in the leg. They were the last travelers into or out of Peking for a week. Even the mails were stopped. After three days it was decided to send them in a roundabout way via Paotingfu. They started in a big lorry; after a certain distance they were to be transferred to camels, then farther along to boats, and finally to a lorry which would get them into Peking. I suppose they got there. We never heard that they did not. we began to hear tales-uncomfortable tales, depressing, ghastly. Some people who had attempted the trip by car had reached the gates of Peking after the closing hour, and had to stay outside all night in a filthy temple. One friend, belated by the roughness of the road and a dozen blowouts, ran for miles on a flat tire; the tire fell off, and he ran on the rim; the rim fell off, and he ran on the spokes; then-well, he was still fifteen miles from the gates. He dug out a couple of rickshaw men, hiding in a village, and, flinging his bags SCR into one rickshaw and himself into another, pressed on, only to find the gates closed. Who among good, home-staying Americans, used to our open cities, can grasp the feelings of a belated traveler when he finds himself shut out by those stupendous gates, the mighty tower frowning above him and the immense walls stretching away on either side? No pleasant, cleanly inn to shelter him in his disappointment and chagrin! Only a few poor houses or shops, forming a wretched suburb, dirty and ill-smelling at the best of times; at present noisome in the extreme from the presence of soldiers and unsanitary conditions, harboring vermin, breeding disease. More tales! more tales! Somebody's Somebody's Chinese "boy" whom we all knew had been caught by soldiers, tortured, and then shot. People talked of the number of beheadings about Tientsin. At a tea party a lady said, "If you have all finished, would you like to hear a story?" We would. She said: "You know little Johnny S, out at Hsiku? He's an American boy, aged nine. I asked him if he were not lonely now that the other children had been sent away. He said: 'Oh, no. There is plenty to see. My dog brought in a head the other day; the dogs often bring in heads.'" CRAPS of news percolated down to us by radio or through those mysterious secret agencies known in the East. The worst was that there had been bombing. It did not seem serious, but thirty people were killed. A bomb had fallen in our street, badly frightening two old women. As our street is only one block long, we thought this altogether too near home, and believed we knew two other old women who would have been badly frightened also. But the tendency here is to make jokes of all these mishaps. Chinese broken-English wording of any incident turns it into a jest. When one's "boy" says solemnly that "a bomb spoilt a woman in the back" or "broke a man's clothes," one feels sympathetic, but turns away to hide a smile and passes on the tale. A whole nonsense book might be written of the happenings of these times, and yet there is much real suffering, mostly among village people. After a week, when the trains began to run, not regularly, but now and then when an engine and some cars were obtainable, they were so dirty and crowded and took so long to go the ninety miles. to Peking that we waited two days longer, until the first rush should be Then we combined with four other American ladies and engaged a compartment, provided ourselves with over. their luggage in the passages, stood on the platforms and clung perilously to the steps. Nevertheless it was not an uncomfortable trip for us. It lasted only eight hours and was singularly devoid of excitement. We passed train-loads of soldiers, some in open cars with tents pitched over one end, looking quite cozy. We passed also on a siding a train of armored cars, manned by Russian soldiers, the most villainous-looking people I ever All along the way the villages were full of soldiers, who had taken possession of the houses; not a woman nor child to be seen and few of the village saw. men. Hour after hour we gazed at the flat, monotonous plain, seeing on the horizon that curious illusion of water with islands and half-submerged trees. Then at last, in the late afternoon, to the northwest we saw the hills; then the wall of the Chinese city; then we were through the wall and really inside the outer city, but apparently still in the country, though the villages and graveyards and temples and little cultivated gardens were closer together. Then, with exulting hearts, we saw a gate tower far away; then the Tartar city wall; then the triple blue roofs of the Temple of Heaven, rising over the wall among trees, dreamlike in the glowing light. Then slowly the train passed on, made a complete turn by the southeastern gate, and ran back slowly, slowly, close beside the great Tartar wall, bastion after bastion coming into sight and being lost to view. The Hatamen is passed, with its crowds of people waiting behind the closed barriers, gazing up at the train as it goes by; the Water Gate is passed, and then quietly the train stops. There was nothing in outward appearances to mark a difference between the arrival of this train and that of any other these many years past. All was peaceful and quiet. People were going about their business as usual. No soldiers visible. We got into waiting rickshaws, and with sighs of perfect contentment were drawn along through the familiar streets. Here at last is our own narrow street, the long gray wall, the red door, the brass knocker, the welcoming servants, the quaint Chinese house with its sunny courtyard, and here, indeed, is the old gray cat. We are at home. Edited by EDMUND PEARSON William Roughead and his EN or twelve years ago it was T my good fortune to run across a book called "Twelve Scots Trials," by William Roughead. I seized it with great joy, read it through, and since that time have read the greater part of it, over again, four or five times. In the interim there have appeared, by the same author, "The Riddle of the Ruthvens," "Glengarry's Way," and certain volumes in the Notable British Trials Series, especially the trials of Mrs. M'Lachlan, Mary Blandy, and Burke and Hare. In these Mr. Roughead edits the report of the trial and contributes a long and careful introduction. It happens that I have a weakness-a deplorable weakness, I am sometimes informed for reading old criminal trials. So it would not be surprising that I should enjoy Mr. Roughead's books and recommend them to any of my friends But while who might share this taste. the mere record of proceedings in court is often amusing, or even exciting, if the work of this author were a mere editing of the record it is doubtful if I should constantly urge people to try his books. It happens, however, that Mr. Roughead, a Scottish lawyer ("Writer to the Signet," as he is called in Edinburgh), is also an antiquarian, learned and curious in the history of his country, and, above all, a literary man whose talent attracted the admiration of Henry James and Joseph Conrad-to mention but two of his enthusiastic readers. This is a rare combination; a very rare combination. Some of his interests and abilities have existed in one or two other writers in Great Britain; they have rarely, if ever, met in one man in America. Our lawyers, if they condescend to literature at all, often turn to history or fiction. Our professional literary men, if they permit themselves to write about crime, feel that they must dress it up as fiction as did Mr. Theodore Dreiser, but recently, in "An American Tragedy." Descriptions of actual crimes have been left to the hurried journalist, who has perforce to be sketchy and inaccurate. I have lately seen horrified comments from a gentleman writing some reminiscences of Celia Thaxter, be 1 vens" and "Glengarry's Way") are by no means unrelieved chronicles of crime. Like the new volume, "The Fatal Countess," they include papers of historical interest and of literary criticism. Since Mr. Roughead now has a widening circle of readers in this country, and since Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company have had the good judgment to bring out three of his books here, it is probably unnecessary to explain that his writings are neither gloomy, morbid, nor horrifying. They do not belong in the class with Toddy's description of the death of Go cause that lady wrote an account of an New York. $4. From "The Fatal Countess" Courtesy E. P. Dutton & Co. The Earl and Countess of Somerset 153 HEYWOOD BROUN "A liberal education." -Brooklyn Eagle "Just what I've been hunting for for 44 years.”— HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON "Thoroughly scholarly, thoroughly useful, human and readable." -JOHN DEWEY "The profoundest story our race can tell, full of wonder and delight."-JOHN MACY "Fascinating.... a week with 'The Story of Philosophy' is easily worth a year with the average college professor." -STUART P. SHERMAN "A book thus brilliantly written is far more than a tour de force. It will be enjoyed by both experts and amateurs." - 99 - Boston Transcript "Durant brings that refreshment to the general reader which was so notable in the writing of William James; as a biographer he has something of the gifts of Lytton Strachey."-New York Times "Where Addison failed, Du- -HENRY HAZLITT, q "Masterly, brilliant." -Philadelphia Record "Vivacious and readable." -Atlantic Monthly ¶ "Durant is Strachey to the Queen of Sciences. -The New Republic "An excellent book. Durant handles his material very adroitly, and never fails to be both clear and interesting." -American Mercury Octavo size 586 pages, 21 full-page illustrations. $5.00 at all book stores. SIMON AND SCHUSTER New York * liath, in "Helen's Babies," where everything was "all blug, blug, blug." He comments upon his wicked folk without mawkish sentimentalism, but with a pleasing twinkle. His literary references often require for their complete enjoyment a better acquaintance with Scottish literature, and especially with Sir Walter Scott, than I am fortunate enough to enjoy. For that reason I feel safe in recommending him to such lovers of Sir Walter as my senior associate, Mr. Lawrence Abbott. But he is of my generation in his admiration for Gilbert and Sullivan, and for such plays as "The Importance of Being Earnest." Mr. Roughead's books of essays are of considerable size, and always well presented in type. Their peculiar quality, which I find so very charming, is a little hard to describe in a few words; least of all, in any of the catch-phrases of the writer of book reviews. The best method to describe it, which I can command, is to say that each of his books is contrived to make a reader, after a few moments' examination, say to himself: "This is the kind of book to read on a long winter's evening around the fire. I wish to be quiet and uninterrupted while I read it. If I do not have that good fortune I will read it anywhere and under any circumstances. It is a good book to read aloud, to one or two persons of the right sort. There is something, as I can see, mellow and mature about it. It needs a comfortable armchair, a pipe, and the pleasant, mysterious shadows of my library for its complete enjoyment. This has been said, I am well aware, of many books; it is peculiarly true of this one. And it is a rare quality among the books which are being published to-day." This may seem to imply that Mr. Roughhead's books are especially for elderly and leisurely persons. While such as they will surely enjoy him, I must point out that the quality needed in his readers is merely the ability to enjoy a good old tale well told. Very young men have been found in quiet corners of the Widener Library, at Harvard, reading Mr. Roughead; he is a favorite with one of the wittiest writers of dramatic criticism in New York; and he is read and admired by persons of widely diverse tastes-women novelists, actors, librarians, lawyers, business men. For the present volume, I prefer to leave it to its readers to discover its merits. "The Fatal Countess" is that Countess of Somerset, earlier the Countess of Essex, who was the central figure in one of the most extraordinary mysteries in history: the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. Personages in the drama were so exalted in station, and the circumstances so strange, that it might almost be called the premier murder, if not of the world, at least of Great Britain. Other essays in this book include an odd and amusing story of a Victorian breach-of-promise suit; a portrait of an eccentric character of old Edinburgh called "Indian Peter;" one literary and one ecclesiastical item; and two fine murders an eighteenth-century poisoning case, called "Laurel Water," and a puzzling adventure on an island near the harbor of Dublin. History SOLDIERS OF THE PLAINS. E. P. By P. E. Byrne. Minton, Balch & Co., New York. $2.50. This is a plea for recognition of the Indian of frontier days as a courageous fighter, an efficient soldier, and a victim of the treaty-breaking white man with a rapacious desire for the Indian's lands. Like most pleas, it is overdone. The sweeping statements so confidently made relate to matters which are an endless subject of controversy. Treaty-breaking was quite as common a practice among the reds as the whites; perhaps most of the intertribal wars were based on real or imputed violations of agreements made over the solemn pipe of peace. Many wars were for hunting grounds; and it is doubtful if any one of the savage tribes could show an ethical right to its land. What it had it got by conquest. The Sioux, for whom the author appears as special advocate, were an imperialist people who dispossessed many tribes of their territories, and the war in which they were finally vanquished by the whites was due in large measure to the appropriation by the Sioux of all the Crow lands east of the Big Horn River. That the Indian was a fighter none will dispute; but in his savage state he was in no sense a soldier. He wanted tremendous odds, either of numbers or position; he was not amenable to discipline; he was, generally, a poor marksman; he lacked persistence, and he soon tired of a particular job of fighting. The Custer battle, an account which forms so large a part of this book, furnishes an excellent illustration. Custer was overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers and armament. This advantage should have enabled the Indians to annihilate Reno on the same day or the one following, and Terry on the third day. Instead, they did not press their attack on Reno, and, though outnumbering Terry by at least seven to one, they fled on his approach. The book is over-laudatory of the Indian, and it is unjustly censorious of Custer. Nevertheless it is not a book lightly to be dismissed. It is one of those controversial works with which one may wholly disagree and yet read and remember with interest and a certain appreciation. Fiction THE TESTAMENT OF DOMINIC BURLEIGH. By Godfrey Elton. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $2. A subtle and powerful piece of character depiction. It begins so deliberately and develops its purpose so slowly that it may not at once receive the reward of praise it deserves. Dominic Burleigh is a facile, agreeable fellow who pleases people, and thus is overestimated as writer and college don. He comes to think he really is a genius. Then comes the war. He finds outthat he is a coward, yet he enlists in the Territorials, sure that they won't go to the In writing to the above advertiscr please mention The Outlook front. But they do; and he is too timid to resign! He is in command of a small section of trench, is cut off at each side, knows that to retreat is to die, sticks it out through fear-and gets great glory, medals, and promotion. But later in the war his soul is searched by the strange life he leads in No Man's Land, where deserters of all armies hide like beasts in deserted dugouts. When he gets back to England, he has lost all his self-assurance. He finds that a high-minded simple girl still loves him, and he becomes a straight man of honest purpose and modest nature. There is genuine imagination here; we believe Elton has a future in literature. SUSAN SHANE. By Roger Burlingame. Scribner's Sons, New York. $2. Mr. Charles Susan Shane is the female type of the great American go-getter. The story of her life is the slow progress of a woman against great odds. A miserable childhood spent on an impoverished farm, nursing her ailing mother, indigent father, and squalling, dirty brother and sister, fills her with a passion for money, which, contrary to belief, seems to Susan the antidote for all evil. At eleven the egg money fails to satisfy her, and she is planning to have a shop and sell the same ice-cream on daintier plates for five cents more than any one else in town. Bernard Moore, one of the wealthy summer residents of Glenvil, recognizes in the child, then peddling her own home-made pastries, the inherent qualities of success, and lends her the money to start a shop. On an adjacent farm lives young David Cord. He is a potential sculptor. The love affair between Davie and Sue is a sickly thing of long standing. Recognizing even then the great snare set to trap the feet of the business woman, Susan prays passionately, "Mother of God, hear me swear from now thenceforward to let no weakness, no love of man, nothing of any kind at all, interfere with my life and my business and my great success. Ave Maria, ora pro nobis! Amen." Many things do interfere momentarily with the success of her several stores, but her dream of having a restaurant in New York with "Susan Shane" in gilt letters on the door comes true. Hard-boiled Susan overcomes the weakness of her love for David, and the end is marriage with Bernard Moore, who can give her her youth's desire-"a full-length mirror, a dressing-table covered with silver, silk to wear, and expensive perfumes." The author has painstakingly developed a vivid, if unsympathetic, personality. The steps in her career have a mechanical sureness. Susan herself is a humorless exponent of efficiency. PORTIA MARRIES. By Jeannette Phillips Gibbs. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $2. "Portia Marries," by Jeannette Phillips Gibbs, written to prove that a career and marriage, with its family obligations, are not incompatible for a woman, may be taken as an answer-perhaps intended-to Mr. Hutchinson's "This Freedom," written to prove that they are. Both authors establish their point, since characters may be created to support any theory, but Mr. Hutchinson is perhaps more convincing. Mrs. Gibbs, who is the American wife of A. Hamilton Gibbs, author of "Soundings," writes from personal experience, but in her own case she limits her law work after marriage to writing briefs for other attorneys, while Miss Thorndike, in the story, curtails her professional work not at all. A week-end suffices for the honeymoon, and when her children are born there is a skip of seventeen years to permit them to grow up and be educated. The process is not divulged. So the author fails to demonstrate her proposition in detail. We know that means to provide proper helpers are not wanting, for both parents are people eagerly paid $240 for the Memorial Edition of Roosevelt. The first complete edition, it I was limited to 1000 sets. Thousands more clamored for it, even at $10 a volume. But now, through a remarkable combina C. s. S. "The MAN who could not be DULL" tion of circumstances, comes the beautiful National Edition, endorsed by the Roosevelt Memorial Association, and priced within the reach of all! The Man who could not be Dull Twenty handsome volumes crammed with life and interest-anecdotes about noted people-Roosevelt's famous letters to his children-frontier history that reads like fiction -his own amazing life story-hero tales for boys-brilliant essays-inside stories of political strategy, of international intrigue, books on outdoor life and nature lore. There is not a member, old or young, of any family but will enjoy some of the many books he wrote. Dignity of office never cramped Roosevelt's hand or thought when he sat down to write. His pen struck the fire that made him the idol of half the world. You chuckle as he keeps statesmen waiting to chat with cowboy friends-you marvel as he plunges into the trackless jungles of Brazil-you admire him as he turns from the cares of state for a pillow-fight with his children. And through each volume run Roosevelt's flashing phrases, his ready, human touch, his boyish humor. Every home should own Roosevelt You are astonished by the brilliant essays so far ahead of their day that they give the key to many of our present problems. But you do not truly know Roosevelt, the man, until you read his letters to his children, with his crude drawings—until you see him, as President, stop on his way to church to rescue a kitten from two dogs. Every home should own Roosevelt. Every school, every organization that stands for good citizenship than $240! should own and treasure the absorbing books by this amazing man. Roosevelt's Complete Works at a remarkable price! Experts have expressed astonishment that so fine a set of books as the National Edition can be had at such a remarkably low price. It is complete-20 volumes, beautifully bound in African green, with gold tops. It contains more than 9,000 pages, printed in large, clear type on a specially made antique paper. Like the $240 Memorial Edition, it contains prefaces especially written by twentyfive such men as Lord Lee of Fareham, Admiral Sims, Owen Wister, Elihu Root, Albert J. Beveridge, John Grier Hibben-eminent men who were proud to call him friend. You may own these 20 volumes and pay for them in easy stages. But first examine them at our expense! Let us send them, all charges prepaid, for free examination. Keep them five days and if they are not in every way worthy of the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons, return them at our expense. Sold by subscription only. Or, send for the free booklet By all means you are safe in ordering these books direct from the coupon. But if you first want a fuller idea of what they contain, what they look like, send for the specially compiled booklet, "The MAN who could not be DULL." It is free. Nothing short of the 20 volumes themselves could so fully show Roosevelt's amazing versatility, his vivid style, his irrepressible humor, and his absorbing personality. It's a booklet you will treasure always. But remember, too, that you may safely order on approval direct from the coupon itself! Don't send a penny, but mail in the coupon-before you turn the page. In writing to the above advertiser please mention The Outlook Outlook Hotel and Travel Bureau NEW YORK: 120 East 16th Street T LONDON: Dorland House, 14 Regent Street HESE offices are maintained for the sole purpose of offering travel information to The Outlook's friends and readers. This is a personal service free of charge. What are your plans for the winter? Bermuda-Florida-the tropics offer allurement. Europe may be visited independently or by way of delightful cruises. SUGGESTIONS Ranches, unusual hotels off the beaten track in our own country. Itineraries built to suit your taste and pocketbook. Write and permit me the pleasure of assisting you with your travel plans. EVA R. DIXON, Director Outlook Hotel and Travel Bureau 120 East 16th Street money-makers, and Miss Thorndike-in private life Mrs. Kent-is too clever a woman to fail in making a pleasant home for her family; but whether it is possible for the mother of a family, not a super-woman, to repair to her office every morning, as does her husband, rise to eminence in her profession, and bring up a family successfully, as Miss Thorndike is made to do, still remains to be proved. Mrs. Gibbs has written an entertaining story, and she may cite instances in real life in support of her theory, notably that of ex-President Taft's daughter, Mrs. Manning, who with a family on her hands carries on her duties as Dean of Bryn Mawr. Incidentally, almost a counterpart of Paul Leicester Ford's well-known description of his heroine's eyes in "The Story of an Untold Love" as "too dressy for the daytime," we find in Jane Thorndike's eyelashes, which are "too long for daytime wear." THE CHARWOMAN'S SHADOW. By Lord Dunsany. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2. This book is "of the stuff that dreams are made on." The story takes place during the Golden Age in Spain, when magic was firmly believed in, and fearfully respected. "As sin increases on earth the need for gold grows greater." With these words the "Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest" sends his son Ramon Alonzo forth to get gold for the dowry of his sister Mirandola. Ramon comes to the forest hut of a great magician, who promises to teach him the secret of making gold in return for his shadow. Collecting shadows is the sinister passion of this master of the Black Arts. Despite the doleful warnings of the "shadowless charwoman who minded that awful house," Ramon Alonzo gives up his fine, sleek young shadow in exchange for one which the master cuts out of the gloom in the air to fit him. Wherever he goes the false shadow, which will neither shrink nor stretch with the sun, sets the hand of all men against him. The master keeps his locked box of shadows in a dim Ramon realizes now that cobwebby room. he must have back his own and the pitiful charwoman's shadow. He steals in and by an incantation forces the box. "Then he opened the lid of the box a little way and took out a shadow in finger and thumb by the heels, as he had seen the magician hold his." There were limp fluttering shadows of all sorts of folk which he laid on the floor. Ramon falls in love with one of the shadows, that of a beautiful girl. It proves to be the charwoman's own shadow, stolen from her as a young girl. With her shadow back, Anemone's flesh takes on the lines and beauty of the shadow, and the lovers run away from the wood to happiness ever after. Among an increasing number of realistic novels, this illusive fantasy of Lord Dunsany's is a delight to the imagination. Travel EAST AND WEST OF HELLESPONT. By Z. Duckett Ferriman. Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston. $5. It is to be hoped that people who like to buy books will like to buy this one, and the remark is made in the full knowledge of what may happen to thoughtless people who go about indorsing travel books-the Putnam's 'll get 'em ef they don't watch out! Seriously, books as good as this are not yet frequent enough to be passed without comment. Z. Duckett Ferriman is an old hand on a journey. He seems to have been taking trains and going places and doing things ever since bustles went out. Indeed, he admits with candor that the first typewriter he ever saw was in the United States' Consul's office at Jerusalem, and it was from a Turkish military band on the In writing to the above advertisers please mention The Outlook |