half an hour," on the theory that I had been led astray, had at least the satisfaction of adjourning there, when my own time was up, and making faces at him through the window.

A sort of combination of these two forms of punishment was tried once, I remember, on a Sunday when we escaped from going to church by hiding in the rhubarb. It was not that we objected to church in any special degree; it was rather that we could not resist the rhubarb, which at that time had grown long and rank and splendidly dense. It was such a perfect hiding-place that we had only to find an adequate reason for hiding, and to escape from church did as well as any other. It was splendid to hear people calling one's name within a few yards of where one lay, when one could actually peer out and see their legs. And when all was still we crept forth and began to wonder and discuss "how long we would get." It was decreed that we go to bed in the afternoon! But that as a punitive experiment failed of its object. It was an innovation, and therefore interesting. It was almost an adventure. To be in bed in broad sunshine, when one was quite well! It was altogether too amusing a situation to depress.

But by far the most effective form of punishment to which we were subjected was the dread Apology. It is hard in later life-it is, I think, espeThe Saturday Review.

cially hard to newspaper editors and members of Parliament-to apologize. It is almost impossible, in my experience, to a small boy. Well do I remember a hideous day of dark rebellion when this awful task was put upon me. We had been throwing snowballs at a girls' school-naturally!and one at least of them had found its billet. I was adjudged the culprit, not because I was the eldest, nor yet because I had first thought of it, but because I alone had succeeded, where all had tried, in hitting the mark. And that rankled deeply. It was decreed that I call on the lady principal and apologize. For the rest of that day, and for much of the night that followed, I was torn and tortured by a strange and mordant shame. I shunned the rest of the company and brooded in seclusion. And then with a sort of wild unthinking dash I seized my cap and ran, never stopping for a moment till I had pulled the bell. In broken half-defiant tones I got it over. The lady, to my great surprise, made little of it, and talked of the pleasure of snow-balling, and asked me to stay to tea. I think she understood what I had been through. And I returned an hour later with a calm and equal mind. But the incident had scored itself deep upon my fickle memory. I never now throw snow-balls at girls' schools.

Bertram Smith.

Lovers and advocates of peace will take peculiar pleasure in the compact and pungent little book on "War and Its Alleged Benefits" by J. Novico, Vicepresident of the International Institute of Sociology, which Henry Holt & Co. publish in a translation by Thomas Seltzer. The author examines and

punctures all the arguments usually put forward in apology for war; and describes tersely and forcefully its various effects,-physiological, economic, political, intellectual and moral. All of which has been done often enough before, but rarely with such vigor or in so brief compass.

"The High Hand," by Jacques Futrelle, traces the career of a young mechanic who decides to enter the politics of his city and state, and, by means of his "Big Idea," foil completely the machine politicians, and become governor of his state and the purifier of the politics of his party. Although he ultimately achieves all this, the outcome is made sufficiently doubtful throughout the experiences of a long political campaign. The story is not

all politics: a thread of romance runs through it, and the young woman whom the hero helps out of an automobile complication in an early chapter becomes his in the closing pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

People who do not object to the element of broad farce in their fiction can hardly fail to take delight in Francis Perry Elliott's "The Haunted Pajamas." It is a story of a pair of Chinese pajamas, reputed to have been enchanted centuries ago by a necromancer, with the result that every wearer changed his semblance without changing his identity or becoming himself aware of the metamorphosis. Sent by a resident of China as a gift to a friend in New York, aptly called Lightnut, who is a vapid nonentity, they bring about, naturally, a great many absurd situations. The story is cleverly told, and may well divert an idle hour or two when the mercury is too high to encourage more serious reading. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Travellers who are "doing" Italy this year cannot do better than to slip into their pockets Henry James Forman's "The Ideal Italian Tour" (Houghton Mifflin Company). The lightness, convenient size and flexible binding suggest this use of the book, and its comprehensiveness, admirable arrangement, and general up-to-dateness abundantly justify it. The book es

capes the extremes of ponderousness on the one hand and scrappiness on the other; it tells the traveller what he needs to know and in a manner at once to stimulate and to satisfy his curiosity; and through the medium of twenty or thirty illustrations it puts before him views of some of the most striking works of art, sculptures, palaces, churches and ruins which he will wish to visit.

Readers who enjoy tales of more or less brutal and reckless daring will like "Stanton Wins," by Eleanor Ingram. The story opens with an exciting automobile track race, in which the driver of the favorite car, suddenly losing his mechanician, takes on a new man, whose boyish face and figure belie his courage, and whose bravery and ready resourcefulness help to carry the car to a triumphant finish. He is retained as mechanician by the brusque driver, who is the hero of the tale, and together they go through many races and exciting experiences. The romantic side of the story is full of interest, although the denouement is easily guessed, and is reasonably convincing, in spite of obvious improbabilities. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

In the Autobiography of Shakespeare (Baker and Taylor Company), the author, Louis C. Alexander, has combined some of the few outstanding facts of Shakespeare's life, with his own ingenious theories concerning the poet's ancestry, tastes, moods, and mental development. He also gives an extensive list of the books that Shakespeare probably read and loved, and much detailed description of the methods of bringing out plays, staging, costuming, and the like, in vogue at that time. The representation of the state of mind and imaginative activity incident to the writing of some of the great plays arouses interest and speculation

"The Historic Christ in the Faith of To-day," by William Alexander Grist (Fleming H. Revell Company), is a profoundly interesting and remarkably well-proportioned work, of immediate importance and enduring value. It is not a life of Christ, in the ordinary sense of the term; but it is a reverent study and vivid presentation of the commanding figure in human history, in the light of all that modern scholarship has disclosed. The author says of the writers of the New Testament: "They wrote with their eyes fastened upon Jesus. They occupied different points of view, they brought varied qualifications to their task; and yet, from their twenty-seven books there emerges one vital, consistent representation of Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God." This also it is which emerges from the author's own study of the historic Christ. He is familiar with the results of modern study and criticism and of modern science; he is broad and tolerant, and his temper is not that of the controversialist; yet the conclusion which he reaches is that Jesus has become the Objective Conscience of our race. "His Gospel is the inexhaustible fount of spiritual inspiration: His Divine Kingdom is the norm of a universal community; love of Him is constituting a bond of human brotherhood and is the directive force of all that is

noblest and best in the world; while faith in His Divine-Human Person is the secret of a virile and exalted theism." It would be difficult to exaggerate the value and significance of this new study of the historic Christ; or the singular lucidity, beauty and simplicity of its style. That it should be the work of a writer hitherto comparatively unknown makes it the more surprising.

Owen Johnson adds the fourth to his Lawrenceville series with "The Tennessee Shad," which bids fair to vie with its predecessor, "The Varmint," in popularity. Many of the characters of the earlier books reappear-Doc Macnooder, Dink Stover and Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan-and to them is added a red-headed young snob who writhes under the nickname of "The Uncooked Beefsteak." To the cooking, or education, of the Beefsteak, the Tennessee Shad gives the best of his varied talent, and the process is amusing in the extreme. It includes the purchase of a lot of bogus trophies at prodigious prices; the trundling of the Shad ten times round the school Circle under the impression that fame, not derision, will be the reward; and finally, the hospitality of his father's hotel in New York extended to the Shad and four of his fellow-conspirators. The chapter describing the visit to the Regal, with Skinner, pater's cash-offer to his son if it can be abbreviated, is one of the drollest in the book, and readers who would fain find a lesson in the fun will be quite satisfied with its conclusion. While a serious estimate of the Lawrenceville stories cannot overlook the fact that they show nothing of the nobler side of school-boy nature, they undeniably reflect its rollicking merriment and mischief in immensely entertaining fashion. The father who reaches out for one of them to see what his son is chuckling over will be provokingly slow

about handing it back. The Baker and Taylor Co.

The first instalment of ten volumes of the "Home University Library of Modern Knowledge" (Henry Holt & Co., Publishers) abundantly justifies the expectations aroused by the announcements of the new series. The volumes are of convenient size, each containing about 250 clearly-printed and attractive pages; and each is freshly-written by a competent authority upon the special subject.

While the volumes, taken together, will constitute a sort of encyclopædia of up-todate knowledge, the volumes are of independent interest and value, and whoever begins the acquisition of them will read them separately with satisfaction while he watches contentedly the lengthening row upon his shelves. In the volume on "Parliament" Sir Courtenay P. Ilbert, clerk of the House of Commons, describes the constitution of Parliament and reviews its history and practice for more than six hundred years, closing with a comparison of its methods with those of Congress and the European parliaments. John Masefield, writing of "William Shakespeare" touches briefly upon his life, and upon the methods of the Elizabethan theaters, and passes to a compact but illuminating discussion of the plays and poems. Hilaire Belloc's volume upon "The French Revolution" is, as the author explains in his preface, less a chronicle than a thesis: it is an attempt to explain the underlying causes and motives of the great upheaval as well as their manifestation. The author's personal attitude, which he frankly avows, as a Catholic and as a sympathizer with republican institutions, gives his judgment upon the issues involved a peculiar interest. G. H. Perris's "A Short History of War and Peace," is something more than

a survey of the causes which in the past have led to war and the influences which at present tend toward peace: it is an attempt to indicate the material interests in which the causes of war and peace are to be found, and it places special stress upon two simple, present-day facts, the first that the earth is now nearly filled with human societies, and the second, that in the most advanced of these, the increase of population is rapidly slackening. "The Stock Exchange" is a short account of investment and speculation, not only on the London stock exchange but in Wall Street and elsewhere, by F. W. Hirst, editor of "The Economist." "The Irish Nationality," is a vivid and sympathetic sketch of the past and present of Ireland, by Mrs. J. R. Green, than whom there could be no better authority. "Modern Geography," by Marion I. Newbigin, editor of the "Scottish Geographical Magazine," describes the discoveries and developments of the last fifty years, which have transformed what some may have been tempted to regard as a somewhat stationary science. William S. Bruce's "Polar Exploration," is a succinct presentation of the essential facts and problems of polar exploration, not a history of polar expeditions. It is rich with the fruits of personal experience, gained during the author's own nine polar voyages and especially his leadership of the "Scotia" expedition in 1902-4. "The Evolution of Plants," is a popular account of the development of flowering plants from the earliest times, written by Dr. D. H. Scott, president of the Linnean Society of London, and fully illustrated. "The Socialist Movement" is at once a history, an explanation and a defence of Socialism, by J. Ramsay MacDonald, chairman of the British Labor Party. Another group of ten books in this series may be expected in July.