Mr. James Oliver Curwood has made a new story of the frozen North in "The Danger Trail," a story in which furs and the dog team, Indians and half-breeds are combined with murder plots borrowed from the histories of trade unions and political conspirators, and elaborate artfulness, fascinating in a story although possibly unattractive in reality. The hero loves a girl who seems to seek his life but in the end he is made happy and months of mystery are explained in a brief half-hour. The tale is excellent of its species in spite of an occasional lapse into the dialect of the stock speculator and the poker player. Bobbs-Merrill Company.

There are few novelists who write of life in the open with keener zest than Harold Bindloss, and his new story, "Thurston of Orchard Valley," is in the familiar style that has given so much pleasure to readers who have grown weary of depressing and dubious studies of conventional society. Its hero is a young Englishman of good family but narrow means, its scene is laid in British Columbia, and its plot turns upon the struggle of an engineer to drain a huge tract of land by blasting a new channel for a river and the underhand efforts of a rival company to

prevent him from completing his contract in the stipulated time. The author's women are not so well drawn as his men, and the romance which he introduces is commonplace, but às a story of strenuous adventure and achievement the book deserves warm praise. Frederick A. Stokes Company.

"Francia's Masterpiece," by Mr. Montgomery Carmichael, is a serious inquiry into the origin and history of the oldest known pictorial representations of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, one an altar-piece by Francia in the Church of San Frediano in Lucca, the other a picture in the Church of San Francesco in Lucca, older and apparently furnishing the ideas for the former. The misapprehensions in regard to the altarpiece, the meaning of its various parts, its history, the name of its donor, and the name of the chapel originally containing it were so many that Mr. Carmichael's search for the truth was long and painstaking and his account of it is intensely interesting. No scholar who has known the dear delight of pursuing an elusive truth can fail to enjoy it. When discovered, the history was found to be both romantic and curious, and possibly its publication may bring to

light other Immaculate Conceptions bitherto mistaken for Coronations and Assumptions. "Francia's Masterpiece" is illustrated by reproductions of the various parts of the masterpiece, and of other pictures on the same subject, and in an appendix it contains a choice assortment of erroneous opinions in regard to it. E. P. Dutton & Co.

"John the Unafraid," is the title of a small anonymous volume vested in royal purple and white and relating

the deeds and words of the one man who was not afraid when, nearly a hundred years ago, certain of the wise of the earth declared that the world would come to an end in forty-two months. This man John lived only to be kind and just and had no time to consider the end of the world, thereby scandalizing those who were preparing themselves for the coming change so that inany came to reprove him, and many more came to be taught how to rid themselves of fear. John is a very Confucius in devising good answers and no small worldly wisdom and common sense mingle with his charity and faith, and as he has a pretty gift of humor, the book should be as agreeable to the children of this world as to the children of light. A. T. McClurg & Co.

"In After Days, Thoughts on the Future Life," is one of those books which in a perfect world would for months after its appearance supersede the novel as a subject for conversation, and turn the thoughts of all worthy readers to the solemn realities of which it treats, but as matters are, it will probably receive small attention except from that minority capable of perceiving that even as a literary curiosity it deserves something more than passing attention, inasmuch as, although but one of its nine authors has been ordained to the ministry, all of them have been successful in their own fields of

effort; and one of them has written a book which for forty years has consoled the mourners of all ages and conditions. Mr. Howells takes up the subject endeavoring to find good advice to the mourner and discusses it with that beautiful delicacy with which he treats all the really serious matters of life; Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward brings forward an original view of the proper way to regard death; Mr. John Bigelow takes up his parable in defence of a personal immortality so earnestly that one is tempted to accuse him of playing Mr. Valiant for Truth; Mrs. Howe writes in the conviction that the persistent "something" which has accompanied her through all the changes of this life will still attend her in whatsoever further events may come; Mr. Henry Mills Alden ingeniously declines to go beyond Tom Appleton's opinion that death is "interesting"; Col. Higginson ranges himself near Mr. Bigelow, wondering how any can doubt a future life, and relating some sacred experiences; Dr. William Hanna Thomson argues for immortality as the only reasonable result of the creation of man; Professor Ferrero warns his readers that not only is there a future life, but that nothing worse could happen to this world than indifference to that life, and lastly Mr. Henry James elaborates the statement that it would be in execrably bad taste for the originator of things to delude man with a vision of immortality only to withdraw it, and that, therefore it is incredible that the vision should not be realized. It is true that a single text of Scripture has more weight than all this conjecture, but it is also true that these conjectures are worth infinitely more than the vague nebulosities called by most of us our thoughts, and they should indeed divert the mind from the best seller even in its fourteenth edition before publication. Harper & Brothers.

But her song is surely haunted by the sweep of white swans' wings. Like a sword she cleaves the night,

and carries memories to the sea, Frosted gowns, and nobles courting, and a great King's revelry.

There are streams that are not waters. The Italian fishers know How the dolphins thread with silver tracks the wistful afterglow, Glades that cut a tangled forest, tides that sever seas asleep,

O it's loved they are by cavaliers and the sailors of the deep.

(FRAGMENT.)

Looking back to the dawn of the human race one can only view with incredulous wonder the work that has been wrought and the fabric that has been fashioned by the restless animal man, with his two ever-busy hands, in the course of, say, some fifty centuries. In the soil upon which London stands are still to be found flint arrow heads and spear points which represent the most finished handiwork of the first Londoner-a naked man in a riverside jungle. Above the beds in which these weapons lie now rises an undreamed-of city, the folk of which may be watching the movements of an airship. while below the buried javelin heads there burrows an electric railway.

The advance of handicraftsmanship since the days of the flint arrow is almost too amazing to formulate, espe cially if it be assumed that man has advanced in like proportion. If this inference includes the estimate of man as an animal, it is well to remember that it is not sound reasoning to judge comprehensively of the worker from his works. It is probable, for example, that the man of to-day is inferior, in certain points, to the savage who made the flint implements. It is safe to assume that neolithic man was keener of sight and hearing and fleeter of foot than is the present inhabitant of these islands. He surely, too, possessed greater powers of endurance. If a Marathon race could be arranged between the modern Londoner and his earliest ancestors I venture to think that the winner would be a cave man, one who had had no choice but to hunt the reindeer on foot. This is not the only discrepancy, for I believe that the modern flint knapper finds it difficult, if not impossible, successfully to reproduce the finest flint implements of the age of stone.

At the present time not a year passes that does not add some wonder to the list of things manufactured. It must not be inferred from this that man, as a master of handicraft, is becoming every year more adept. Handicraftsmanship has a limit, just as there is a limit to the power of vision and of hearing. Has that limit even now been reached, or is it, by any possibility, declining? In response to the question-"Are we losing the use of our hands?" I would venture an answer in the affirmative and say "that we are." I do not wish to draw any pessimistic deductions from this conclusion but merely to discuss the fact.

Two of the commonest handicrafts are those of writing and sewing, but they are being now rapidly supplanted by the typewriter, on the one hand, and the sewing-machine, on the other. The finer use of the fingers is thus becoming lost, so far as these simple crafts are concerned. There was occasion when penmanship was almost a fine art, and the writing-master a power in the land. In these present days of hurry there is no time for elegant handwriting. The script of the ordinary letter-writer is often as hard to interpret as the message on the Rosetta stone, and as there is, coincidentally, no leisure available for the deciphering of illegible writing the typing machine becomes opportune. The machine not only represents a loss of manual skill, but a loss of that individuality which attaches to handwriting whether it be good or bad.

Passing from these illustrations, which are obvious and trivial, I may turn to larger things, and commence with the handiwork of the surgeon. Surgery during recent years has made amazing advances-advances which are without a parallel in the history of