Though well printed and tolerably illustrated The Upper Ten* appeals to one only by exciting almost unqualified nausea. The hero, a youth of the 'Snobocracy" as Mr. Ballou would say, is cast off by his father for venturing to love the heroine Ami Due. But his faithful valet induces him to buy a ticket in the Louisiana lottery: lucky numbers are drawn and Van Dyne, armed with a fortune, sets out to find his temporarily lost love. This young woman is meanwhile engaged in keeping company with the mermaids, into whose dominion the cruel father of Van Dyne had cast her. Van Dyne finds her and carries her away from the haunts of her merdamsels. "Merdamsels" may easily be allowed to one who has transcended, in this one volume, half the laws of physics and physiology. Throughout the different series of this book are interspersed bits of moralizing and daubs of the most ingenuous flattery of certain notable Americans, among others Prof. Whitney of Yale. But in spite of all these devices, coupled with attempts at French style and finish, it has little to raise it above mediocrity. J. W. B. It is a pleasure to turn from Mr. Ballou's "American" novel to a book that contains an idea or two not shadowed forth in either Jules Verne's books or the Kreutzer Sonata. Looking Further Backward is a work intended to expose the defects of Mr. Bellamy's system. It is cast in the form of lectures delivered by a Chinese professor to his American students, after the conquest of America by China. There is a tale told somewhere within the main current of lectures, a tale in which a woman figures. This, to relieve the somewhat weighty descriptions of Chinese warfare and Chinese administration, portrays America in the twenty-first century. Mr. Vinton's stand is decidedly against nationalism as depressing individuality far too much. Moreover the nationalist government is weak in its executive functions; it cannot meet internal disorder nor contend successfully with foreign enemies, who will be sure to take advantage of its help. lessness. Speaking of the imaginary nationalist government the imaginary professor is made to say: "They realized that a man might work one hour a day and do nothing the other twenty-three hours, but they could not realize that a man might do nothing for twenty-three years and yet perform labor of inestimable value in the twenty-fourth." These words, with much that precedes and follows them, form an apt criticism of certain phases of this country's present naval and military policy. J. W. B. BOOKS RECEIVED. A Fellow of Trinity. By Alan St. Aubyn and Walt Wheeler. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co. The Natural Speller. New York, etc.: American Book Co. The Satires of Juvenal. Edited by Thomas B. Lindsay, Ph.D. New York, etc.: American Book Co. For sale by Judd. *The Upper Ten. By W. H. Ballou. New York: United States Book Co., successors to John W. Lovell Company. Looking Further Backward. By Arthur Dudley Vinton. Albany Book Co. The Unwritten Constitution of the United States. By Christopher G. Tiedman, A.M., LL.B. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Judd. Tabular Views of Universal History. Compiled by G. P. Putnam, A.M., and continued to date by Lynds E. Jones. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. For sale by Judd. Price $1.75. Prang's Christmas Publications. Very excellent samples of cards, Christmas books, etc. Boston: L. Prang & Co. TO BE REVIEWED. Sidney. By Margaret Deland. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. For sale by Judd. Price $1.25. Lyrics for a Lute. By Frank Dempster Sherman. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Judd. Price $1.00. By Bret Harte. A Ward of the Golden Gate. Boston and New York: Thoreau's Thoughts. Selections from the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Essays in Philosophy. By William Knight. Boston and New York: Over the Teacups. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Judd. Price $1.50. EDITOR'S TABLE. "There is no color in the world, And most of it falls in New Haven! It is fortunate for us that we are, after a fashion, amphibians; or else we should lead a very unhappy sort of life as we sat at the window, watching the heavy clouds drift slowly overhead, and listening to the drip, drip, drip, from the branches of the leafless elms. I can hardly imagine anything more dreary than a rainy day in New Haven. The campus is deserted except for here and there a mackintoshed individual picking his way along the stone walks, or a crowd of men just out of recitation hurrying back to their entries, there to instal themselves in comfortable chairs and defy the elements with a good book. Did you ever realize how much an easy chair adds to your enjoyment of a book? I really think that if you took an average novel and gave it to one man who should read it sitting in a straight-backed chair, and to another, who should read it while he lounged in a comfortable arm-chair, his feet up on another, that their opinions of the story would be very different. There is almost as much science in reading a book—and in this case the word "reading" is used to denote the physical rather than the mental effort of the reader-as there is in serving a dinner. But, to return to our rainy days! We ought, in truth, to be accustomed to them now. St. Elihu says that New Haven weather has always been the same, tearful-and he is old enough to know! He claims that one of the conditions on which he accepted his canonization was that he should have a water-proof halo,-so that the rain could not come through, I suppose. The Saint is really getting quite excited as the days roll by. The coming championship games furnish him with food for unlimited conjecture; and you know what an unquenchable talker he is! If he was not so old, I really believe that he would go out to the field and play himself. As it is, his joints are pretty stiff, and he has to content himself with reading the papers that come to him, as he sits beside the steam heater,-for want of an open fire-place. He was reading the Advocate, the other day, and as he turned the pages I noticed him smile now and then. Presently he handed me the paper, saying, "They are not so very much ahead of us, up there at Harvard, after all, are they?"-and I read the following: "English 12 was in session. The students were seated in different parts of the lecture-room, which, being built to hold five times this number, looked almost empty. They were forty or fifty in number, common-place looking young men, with sober faces bent over the themes they were criticising. My work was finished and I sat for some moments looking about the room. No one spoke, no one smiled, nothing broke the monotony but the rustling of paper, or, now and then, the step of a student as he returned his theme and went away. To the left of me a man was reading a little red covered book, and occasionally, leaning over till his head was close to his neighbor's, he whispered to him, and seemed to call his attention to different passages which had interested him. From time to time somebody yawned, but this was the nearest approach to a change in expression in the faces surrounding me. It was nearly twelve o'clock, and every once in a while some one turned hastily to glance at the clock, and hastily resumed his work. For the most part, however, they wrote without looking up, or read, with the ends of their pencils in their mouths. Everyone, even the professor looked stupid and bored. The whole room wore an air of dullness, which the sun itself, as it poured in at the windows, could not drive away; so it stopped short at the upper row of seats." To a Yale man such a scene seems almost impossible, but it is probably a very accurate description of the Harvard method of conducting recitations, or whatever such a gathering may be called, for it is hardly a recitation. This sketch (called by the Advocate a "College Kodak ") is a sort of "pastel in prose." Such " pastels" in the college publications have been exceedingly numerous (as Life prophesied last spring that they would be) since the publication of that translation from the French of prose poems. Almost every college paper since then has printed a "pastel," but, (again, as Life prophesied,) they are most of them exceedingly poor. This is a style that young writers are hardly up to; but it is also a style that is most fascinating to them. These bits of sentiment read so smoothly that it almost seems as though they had of their own accord dropped off the end of the author's pen. It is hard to realize sometimes, that the easiest reading is the hardest writing. Another item which amused the Saint was the Lehigh Burr's account of a literary foot ball game. It appears that the exchange editor of Bethlehem stepped into the sanctum one day and found things in a tremendous uproar. The college papers were having it out among themselves in a more forcible way than editorial quibbling: "My ball!' screamed the Pennsylvanian. 'Mr. Umpire, watch this man holding me.' 'I'll slug you if you kick me again.' 'Watch him around that end.' Second down, right here,' said the YALE LIT., jabbing our very best pen into the new table cover to indicate the spot, 'three yards to gain.' 'On side, Brunonian,' yelled the Nassau Lit., 'I'll give the other side five yards if you don't keep on side.' We fairly gasped with amazement at this unusual scene, and then suddenly realizing that we had inadvertently left a foot-ball on the table we rushed forward and seized the much-abused object just as a pile of excited papers fell on top of it. 'Time's up!' said the YALE LIT. 'our side wins, 18 to 4.' 'I don't care,' said the Cornell Sun, who had been playing against a back number of the Burr, 'I'll do you up the next time we play.' The YALE LIT. smiled blandly and made some remark we did not catch, but it must have been apropos, for the Sun glared savagely at it and said, 'Yes, and I can thrash you, too, at rowing, foot ball or anything you want,' and the Sun limped off muttering to itself." This is certainly a novel manner of treating the exchange question, and the Burr deserves credit for it. The November Muse is sung to many tunes, of which this from the Trinity Tablet is quaint: YE THREE GLADDE THYNGES. I. Of gladde thynges, two there be, Ay three! Ye Wine we, singing, Sip; A Maide's redde Lip; Ye Musick, sweetlie ringing, To which gaye Dancers trip. II. Of sadde Thynges, too, there be Just three! Ye Ache of Swelling Crowne; A darke Eye's Frowne; And vain Regrets, upwelling, Which Singing will not drowne. -Trinity Tablet. On my desk a long-withered buttercup lies, The face of a maiden whose wind-blown hair Forgetful of all save love and her And the afternoon on a flower-decked slope When she gave me this same yellow sorcerer, This buttercup conjuring in me fond hope. And the hope which it conjures is this,—that I may E'en as she chose from her yellow bouquet This flower, gold-chaliced, and gave it to me. -Harvard Advocate. |