Old Books and New.

I SPOKE last month of one of Stanley Weyman's novels, "The Man In Black." But "there are others." There is "A Gentleman of France," and "The House of the Wolf," and "Under the Red Robe," a story of Cardinal Richelieu's time, which has been dramatized and played with great success in London and New York. That is in most cases the final test of an historical romance; if it makes a good play it is a good novel indeed. I don't think there is anything that can so thoroughly rest one in body and mind as historical romances, be they new or old. When I am thoroughly tired and worn out with the hum-drumness and common-placeness of life, when nothing goes right and the day seems destined for petty annoyances, then give me one of the stirring tales of old romance, when the world went well. I spoke last month of the refreshing romances of Alexndre Dumas, but we have a great romancer in our own language who is read far too little nowadays. How many people there are who have never read Walter Scott at all, not even Ivanhoe. Why the boys of the past generation used to literally wear out copy after copy of Ivanhoe. Any one who has never sat in the hall of Cedric the Saxon, never laughed with the poor jester, never watched the fight from the window beside Rebecca of York, has missed some of the good things of life. All of Scott's best novels are published in the very cheap editions now.

Among the very modern romances I know of none more entertaining than Anthony Hope's famous "Prisoner of Zenda." We were drifting sadly away from romantic novels when that book appeared. It literally conquered Christendom, and now everyone who can write, and a great many people who can't, are making romances, until the market is full of them. It is a good thing of a winter night to quit Pennsylvania or Ohio, or wherever you happen to live, and get into that imaginary kingdom of Ruritania with the two Rudolfs and Black Michal and the beautiful Flavia who makes the book end very sadly because she does her duty so well. It is not a long book, you can almost read it in a single evening, and you will not readily find another that will so interest and move you. Mr. Hawkins is one of the few modern authors who can tell a story simply and strongly and make you feel as if you were on the spot and saw the whole thing at first hand. He has written several other novels of less note, but none of them can at all compare with the Prisoner, unless it is his last book of short stories called "The Heart of the Princess Osra." But even if he never writes another book so good, readers of English fiction will still be greatly in his debt, for he has written a strong and healthful tale, which is more than many a more prolific novelist has done.

One of the most attractively bound of last year's publications was Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's "A Lady of Quality." It is a stirring eighteenth century novel and interesting enough reading, but there are some of us who still cling to the work of Mrs. Burnett's earlier years, the days when she wrote "That Lass o' Lowries" and "Louisiana." When we think how they charmed and delighted us once, we are inclined to agree with the grumbler who says that "somehow books aren't as good as they used to be." Mrs. Burnett has not done anything in her best vein since the days of "Little Lord Fountleroy," which is still so popular with the young folks and the old folks who are young in heart. Among the attractive editions of this year there is that beautiful one of Thomas Nelson Page's "In Ole Virginia." There is no better book by an American author than that. It is a little classic. I consider "Meh Lady" one of the most perfect of all short stories. No man seems to have mastered the real meaning and characteristics of Southern life like Mr. Page, or to have told of them so feelingly.

Then among the new publications there is Kate Douglas Wiggin's "Marm Lisa." Miss Wiggin has, in a much more legitimate vein of course, Charley Hoyt's tendency to mildly satirize everything. And she can do it most thoroughly and yet never say a really unkind thing. Her satire doesn't bite your tongue like Miss Lillian Bell's, for instance. You feel quite sure that there are certain things and people that Miss Wiggin takes quite seriously and holds dearer than wit even, while you are never certain that Miss Bell would not caricature her best friend if she had a clever idea. The kindly shafts of Miss Wiggin's humor are in the present volume directed against the club woman. The club woman is represented by Mrs. Cora S. Grubb, agent for the Eldorado face powder, and member of every band, club, league, society, association, ever organized in San Francisco. This visionary lady is moved by every mission on earth but that within her own threshold, and the care of the ungovernable "twins," whom she has unwillingly inherited from her sister, is left wholly to poor little "Marm Liza," whose mind was half darkened from her birth. About this pathetic little figure the main interest of the book centers. (Houghton, Mifflin and Co. Cloth $1).

In a second-hand book store last week I noticed an old book that I had not seen for years, "The Prince of the House of David." I remember distinctly when I was a very small child of hearing my two grandmothers read it aloud to each other. And one of the dear old ladies used to take short naps covertly while the other read patiently on. I don't think I ever went to sleep though, and ever since then Mary and Martha and Lazarus have been real personages to me. I am old-fashioned enough to like the book quite as well as that more ambitious work, "Ben Hur." Of course as a novel it is not nearly so good, but there is something very sweet and quaint and convincing about the frank letters of that Jewish maiden for the first time visiting her native land. It is one of the many good old books that have been pushed aside and forgotten in the general hurry of the world. There is another old book that I have lost track of and want to inquire about. It was called, I think, "Mary Bunyan" and was a story of John Bunyan's blind daughter. If any of my readers can tell me anything about this old book or where it is to be found, I will be deeply grateful.

I received a few days ago a letter from one of our readers asking what book I would most highly recommend for a boy of fourteen. Of course, there is no "best" boy's book, but I replied without hesitation Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island." That is one of the boy's books destined to immortality. It will be read as long as there is youth and courage and boyish enthusiasm in the world. It was written for a boy. Mr. Stevenson wrote it for his little step-son Lloyd Osbourne, who was fond of pirate stories. So the genial Scotchman, who was himself always a boy at heart, wrote this wild tale of buccaneers and buried treasure and hair-breadth escapes on sea and land. It makes one young again to read it. Who does not feel all the delicious, credulous fear of a boy when he hears the blind man's stick come tapping down the road on that eventful night at the "Admiral Benbow?" Who does not feel that spinal thrill of pleasurable terror when Jim Hawkins climbs the mast of the Coracle with Israel Hands, dirk in hand, climbiing after him? When a boy once begins the book he is not happy until he has finished it, and then he is unhappy because there is no more of it to read. And yet his tale that is as thrilling in interest as police fiction is written in the purest English that any man of this generation has written, and handled with so masterful a skill that it would frighten the boys away if they knew of it. But, bless you, they never do know it! Its the height of art to conceal art, and this story reads so easily that you never think it wasn't written easily. You are concerned with Black Dog and terrible John Silver and the treasure that was the price of so much blood and villainy, and never think what skill it took to make all these things of such vital interest. For an artist is most truly great when you can care so intensely for his characters themselves that you almost forget to admire the rare craft with which they were put together.