"I have recently read," writes the beautiful lover of beautiful books, "Bourget's 'Tragic Idyl,' and while it is beautifully written it is unclean, but is by no means so vile as 'Intruder.' Don't you be polluted by coming in contact with or having even a bowing acquaintance with either of these books. Immorality is in them idealized, but it is still a festering, suffering spot, and as the stirring of a sewer causes fever such novels as these work untold evil.
A charming little volume by William Sherfs, called 'Wives in Exile,' came my way the other day. It is not new, but it is light and pure, with gems of strength strewn through it, frothy but moonshiny. 'In Touch With the Infinite,' by Ralph Waldo Trine, is more Emersonian than anything I've read in years. Trine is more satisfying than Hudson, and just as convincing."
The following exquisite bit of Moorish verse contains quite as much truth as poetry:
"Tyrant of man, imperious Fate,
I bow before thy dread decree,
Nor hope in this uncertain state
To find a seat secure from thee.
"Think not the stream will backward flow
Or cease its onward course to keep;
As soon the blazing star shall glow
Beneath the surface of the deep."
A book that contains "218 pages and only one dull one, and that the blank flyleaf," is the verdict of The Bookman concerning Joseph Conrad's "Children of the Sea."
"Our War With Spain," by Edwin Emerson, Jr., and "Life at Camp Wikoff," by R. H. Titherington, are the leading features of Munsey's for November. Max Pemberton's new story, "The Garden of Swords," makes a promising beginning, but the cream of the number is contained in "Literary Chat," in the stories of Jerome K. Jerome, Benson, and the oft-repeated tale of Kipling and the elephant.
LOOKING BACK.
We two walking at early morn,
We two walking the brook beside;
Was it the lark's song, up from the corn,
That rose and echoed, and ere it died
Filled all the waste of the meadow wide
With a long, heart-thrilling, enchanting lay?
Ah, though the years in their flight divide,
I hear but the sound of thy voice today.
Time was sweet to us, both lovelorn,
While came no breath from the world to chide;
Red was the red rose, without a thorn,
You gave me then, when in first love's pride
We dreamed life holy, earth glorified,
And thought the Maytime would last for
aye —
Ah! though the years in their flight divide,
I hear but the sound of thy voice today.
What though we think now with weary scorn
Of the old love gone with the old year's tide!
We by the world's woes worn and torn,
Older-grown, too, and sadder-eyed,
With thought made clearer by time's swift stride,
We calmly acknowledge our idols clay —
Ah! though the years in their flight divide,
I hear but the sound of thy voice today.
Adrift on the ocean without a guide,
Fate, does thy sad star light the way?
Ah! though the years in their flight divide,
I hear but the sound of thy voice today.
