ing world, for we feel convinced that, had the opportunity offered, he would have become one of the greatest actors of his day, or, perhaps, the pioneer of all the penny dreadfuls ever written. Yet, after calmly pondering the matter, it strikes us that the fat boy did not do so badly for himself, after all, for he is not only well known to fame, but he is always welcomed as a favorite!

There is still one more thing I should like to say, ladies and gentlemen, if you will kindly extend your patience to me for a few moments longer. Although this is the first time I have actually ventured to address you, I have frequently had the desire, and, now that the opportunity has come, now that I am standing here face to face with so many of my father's most valued friends and readers, I find a

The Dickensian.

difficulty in expressing in adequate words the vivid sense of pleasure I felt when I was invited by our kind friend Mr. Matz to act as your chairman upon this occasion. It is a great honor and privilege I shall not easily forget, for, in spite of our not having met before as we meet to-night, there has always been between us, I hope, the bond of our love for my father's works. To you who know those works intimately his voice is as young and fresh as it remains to his children, filling our hearts with the same laughter and delight; while in its deep accompaniment of power and sincerity was surely struck that note of sympathy with all human joy and sorrow that vibrates and vibrates again, seeming as though it would never cease sounding an echo to his memory.

Among the announcements of Henry Holt & Co. for the autumn and winter are two new series: "The Watteau Library," a group of dainty reprints, prepared with unusual care, including Chesterton's "Five Types: A Book of Essays," Maeterlinck's "The Inner Beauty," Bacon's "Gardens and Friendship" and other choice books; and "The World's Leaders," a group of biographies, classified by volumes according to the pursuits of the men treated, the first volume being "The World's Leading Poets" by H. W. Boynton, and the second "The World's Leading Painters" by G. B. Rose.

Little, Brown & Co. will issue at an early date the first five volumes in an entirely new series of masterpieces of literature, illustrated in color, called The Burlington Library. The books comprise "Cranford" with 24 illustra

tions in color by Evelyn Paul, "The Vicar of Wakefield" with 24 illustrations in color by Margaret Jameson, "The Essays of Elia" with 24 illustrations in color by Sybil Tawse, "A Tale of Two Cities" with 24 illustrations in color by Sep. E. Scott, and "Of the Imitation of Christ" with 24 colored reproductions from the Old Masters.

John Fleming Wilson, well known already to magazine-readers by short stories of unusual dash and daring, has chosen for the scene of his first novel the Oregon timberlands in the days of the pack train and the settler. Foremost among "The Land Claimers" is Sim Spencer-"the wickedest man on the water-front"-who has been shipping sailors from San Francisco for ten years before the doctor orders him to an open-air life, and whose undaunted struggle to "put on weight"

so that he can pay back the shrewd swindler who has sold him a worthless claim furnishes the outline of the plot, of which the piquant, self-reliant daughter of a frontiersman is the heroine, with a prim and pretty schoolmarm from the East, a 'Frisco actress fallen from "legitimate" to "variety," and a young college graduate seeking his fortune, for minor characters. The writer is lavish with his incidents, but his real strength is in his descriptions of forest, mountain and storm, some of which are really powerful. Little, Brown & Co.

Clayton Sedgwick Cooper's "The Bible and Modern Life" (Funk, Wagnalls Co.) is not an essay in theological exegesis, but a concise and simple explanation of the value of the Bible under modern conditions, with practical suggestions as to up-todate methods of Bible study and the organization and conduct of men's Bible classes. The author is the international secretary for Bible study of the Young Men's Christian Association, and his book is the fruit of years of experience in teaching Bible classes in this country, and of personal observation not only in this country but in Europe and in India and the Far East. People who imagine that Bible study is going out of fashion should be reassured by Mr. Cooper's statistics which show 80,000 college men in eighteen different countries voluntarily enrolled in classes for Bible study,nearly 30,000 of them in the United States. The chief value of this book lies in its practical suggestions, which are well calculated to extend the revived movement for Bible study.

Some of their most popular authors of boys' and girls' books, and some new writers, appear in the list of juvenile stories which A. C. McClurg & Co. will publish this Fall. Byron A. Dunn con

tributes "The Scout of Pea Ridge," which is the second story in the popular "Young Missourian Series." Quincy Scott has taken advantage of the exciting night raids in Kentucky for a story, "The Night Riders of Cave Nob," In "Billy Tomorrow Stands the Test," the third of Mrs. Sarah Pratt Carr's "Billy Tomorrow Series," the little hero of the San Francisco fire enters upon the path of chivalry and first love. Mrs. Edith Ogden Harrison has written another fairy tale, "The Glittering Festival." George Alfred Williams, the artist, and Tudor Jenks, the popular writer for boys, have collaborated in a "What Shall I Be?" series. The first two volumes are "The Fireman" and "The Sailor," and others will be added from time to time. Eight new volumes have been added to the "Life Stories for Young People" which George P. Upton translates from the German every year for appreciative American readers.

From Clarence E. Mulford, author of "Hopalong Cassidy" and "Bar 20," comes "Bar 20 Days," in which many of the characters of the earlier books reappear. These stories of ranch life on the Texas frontier include adventures with Mexican smugglers, shanghaing sailors and Apaches broken loose from the reservation, as well as with barbed-wire fences, stampeding cattle, horse-thieves and rustlers. Rough, vigorous, and full of a reckless daring which sometimes rises to heroism, they are not tales of outlawry, and if one of the most amusing shows Hopalong Cassidy getting the drop on Townsend, the self-appointed marshal,-who has announced himself also town council, mayor, justice and pound-keeper of the town of Rawhide, and whose tyranny is based on his uncanny faculty of anticipating the other man's draw-there is none of intenser interest than that in which the Bar 20 outfit rallies to the

support of Edwards, the marshal fresh from Kansas, bent on breaking up the band of shiftless malcontents who rendezvous at Harlan's saloon. With an unusual combination of effective narrative, description and dialogue, Mr. Mulford's stories are easily among the best of their kind. A. C. McClurg & Co.

The "problem" which Constance Smedley Armfield presents in her noticeable novel, "The Larger Growth," is not the problem of husband and wife, but the problem of parent and child. "Not an attempt to formulate a theory for the conduct of family relationships, but merely the record of the emergence of a group of individuals from the family chrysalis," the book gives a remarkably realistic picture of middle-class life in an English provincial town, and is of unusual interest as a story, quite apart from any theories suggested. Within the Maddox chrysalis are a serious, hard-working, self-improving father-agnostic by conviction-whose narrowness and rigidity almost neutralize his real devotion to his household; a simple-hearted, affectionate mother, perpetually perplexed by the antagonism between her husband and his growing children; a boy who insists on going up to London instead of taking the place in his father's office for which he has been destined; another son with the artistic temperament and socialist tendencies; and two daughters, who represent the radical and conservative types of modern womanhood. The story is told in booksChildhood, Youth, Adolescence, Upheaval, Education, Light, Freedom-fill

ing some four hundred pages, and the twenty-five years which it covers are not too many for the reader's interest in its strongly-individualized characters. Incidentally many current topics are touched on, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with satire. The book is full of quotable passages and is decidedly one of the most satisfactory of the season. E. P. Dutton & Co.

In Dr. Charles Edward Jefferson's "Why We May Believe in Life After Death" (Houghton Mifflin Co.) the old, old question "If a man die shall he live again?" is given an assuring answer, but an answer fully in accord with the progress of modern thought and investigation. The book divides itself into three sections, each of which constituted one in a course of lectures delivered last winter at the Leland Stanford Junior University upon the Raymond P. West Memorial Foundation. The first presents the reasons for a restudy of human destiny in the light of changed conditions and currents of thought, and shows that, though men may talk less than once they did of the problem of immortality the old question is still present in all minds; the second states fully and frankly the argument against immortality, and considers, point by point, its force and significance; the third presents reasonably, logically and convincingly the argument for immortality. These lectures are free alike from dogmatism and from mere rhetoric; they are charged with a deep human sympathy; and their message is one of comfort and inspiration.