pect nothing. They are told by a certain set of jaded and supercilious critics that modern poetry is practically worthless, that this is not a poetic age, that those who write in verse at present practise it as a gentle accomplishment and an agreeable pastime, that the poets who take pains to master the technique of their art are altogether artificial, and that those who do not take pains are altogether careless and slovenly-in short, that whoever ventures to write poetry in such an age as this betrays the sad fact that he is a minor person, and therefore his book is to be labelled, before reading, as "minor verse."

It would be not altogether a bad thing for critics of this order if they could learn to look somewhat more simply and directly at the books which they criticise and to judge them by positive standards rather than by relative prejudices. But probably this is too much to expect, at least for the present.

And, meantime, what shall the writer of poetry do? He shall continue to find the material for his work in the experiences of his own life and to learn the methods of his art from the great poets who have gone before. He shall write of the things that he knows and feels and loves, as joyfully, as truthfully, as carefully, as musically, as he can, and then, when he has finished his work, be it little or much, to the best of his power, he shall trust it to the people to whom it belongs, be they few or many. If it is alive, it will find its own place and live its own life.

AUTOMOBILE VICTIMS.

Automobile Magazine.

During the "season" which has just closed, while football was claiming fifteen victims and the deadly rifle of the hunter laid sixty-six fellow-sportsmen low, automobiles killed just three people. Comparisons are odious and unprofitable; and yet I cannot refrain from observing that, seeing their excessive deadliness, the ball and the bullet never got one one-hundredth of the newspaper and legislative lashing that the far less deadly automobile got. Of course we all know that it is the fashion now for the press, the public, the bench and the stage to rail at the automobile; but even so, facts are facts and some figures won't lie at least the ones I have quoted above don't.

FORGET IT.

The Four Track News.

If the journey's way is rough,
Why forget it.

If you find life's treatment tough,
Just forget it.

And if you're feeling blue
At the way Fate's using you,
Why the best thing you can do
Is forget it.

By Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D., Professor of Exegetical Theology in New College, Edinburgh. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, February, 1905. Price, $1.00.

This book is composed of seven lectures delivered at Lake Forest College, Ill., in May, 1904. The subjects are: I. The Bible and Other Sacred Books; II. The Canon of Scripture; III. Revelation; IV. Inspiration; V. Infallibility; VI. The Trustworthiness of the Gospels; VII. The Miraculous Element in the Gospels.

This is a valuable book, the fruit of profound scholarship and Christian experience. For forty years Dr. Dods has been an authority on Biblical subjects, and has been rightly considered a most worthy teacher of teachers. Probably no other man of our generation is as competent to write on this comprehensive subject of the origin and nature of the Scriptures. The book, although it reveals great learning and painstaking research, is written in such a simple and clear style that it appeals not merely to the clergy, but to the average reader, and is a great addition to the religious literature of the day.

In the first lecture the author shows that the Bible is superior to all other sacred books, especially the writings of the religions of the East, Zoroastrianism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism. All these sacred writings, except the Koran, were in languages but little known until within a few years.

He shows the absurdity of placing any great value upon these books, except as a means of studying the religions that they reveal. "The value of the Bible results from its connection with Christ: He is the supreme, ultimate revelation of God, and the Bible, being

Church tells him so; the Protestant believes it to be God's Word, because through it God has spoken to him in such sort as to convince him that it is God who speaks. This is the one sure foundation stone of Protestantism-the response of the individual conscience to the self-evidencing voice of God in Scripture. He does not need to go to the Church to ask if this be God's Word; his conscience tells him it is. Deeper than that, for a foundation of faith, you cannot get, and any faith that is not so deeply founded is insecure,-it may last. and it may bring a man to all needed benefit, but it is not reasonably defensible, and therefore it is liable to be upset. Christ is the ultimate authority. The true Protestant order is, first, faith in Christ; second, faith in Scripture. Our

faith in Scripture, but our faith in Scripture hangs upon Our faith in Christ."

In the third lecture, on Revelation, it is shown that the Bible is not a theological text-book. God has revealed Himself in creation, in man, in history and in Christ; in the Bible we have the record of God's revelation, His gracious and saving purpose and work.

In the chapter on Inspiration Dr. Dods. is liberal and scholarly; he holds that Paul did not advocate verbal inspiration, and concludes by showing the purpose of inspiration.

The fifth chapter deals with the criticism of the Gospels, and shows the methods of treating discrepancies and how criticism repudiates literal inerrancy. In his lecture on the "Trustworthyness of the Gospels," the author emphasizes the necessity of criticism, and declares that criticism cannot be barred out, but that the ideal critic has not yet appeared. While the critic demonstrates that minute accuracy cannot be claimed for the Gospels, yet what he contends for is that they present a true picture of Him whose ministry they describe.

The last chapter is an exhaustive treatise on the "Miraculous Element in the Gospels," and closes by exalting Christ as the greatest of all miracles.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, a Record, an Esti

mate, and a Memorial. By ALEXANDER H. JAPP, LL. D., F. R. S. E. With hitherto unpublished leters from R. L. Stevenson in facsimile. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons; 16mo., 308 pages. Price, $1.

Mr. Japp has undertaken a task and accomplished it in a way that redounds to the credit of his head and heart and he will be thanked by the lovers of Stevenson throughout the world. It is the nearest and clearest view of the great writer that we have yet seen. Mr. Japp's oportunities of meeting Mr. Stevenson were many and the correspondence between them furnishes flashes of light on the inner life of Stevenson that are not to be seen in any other work. We are brought closer to the great romancer and poet. We seem to gather, if it were possible, a warmer interest and a closer knowledge of that wonderful creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this our peerless English tongue. The expression of the great writer was so original and fresh from Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various, its too brief flow so consummate through an inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil, that mastery of the art by which Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed these imaginings to us so picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own ro

mantic life, and its sudden close. The good fairies brought all gifts, save that of health, to his cradle, and the gift-spoiler wrapped them in a shroud. The limitations of his work could not be bounded. In originality, in the conception of action and situation, which, however fantastic, are seemingly written reason, once we breathe the air of his fairyland; in the union of bracing and heroic character and adventure; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and simple, his gift was exhaustless. No other such charmer, in this wise, has appeared in his generation. In the completeness of the work which he had time to finish there is no man since Daniel Defoe took such infinite pains as Stevenson, and none had a better right to say: "There was one thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and that was to tell out everything as it befell."

Stevenson's own life, too, as told by Mr. Japp, is of absorbing interest. One would naturally think that a regulation stay-at-home life would have been the only course dreamed of by the sickly, early-doomed man, but Stevenson had the instinct and he had the courage to make his physical weaknesses, the servant and not the master of the faculties within him. Nothing commonplace sufficed him. The ancient mandate, "Follow thy Genius," was well obeyed. Unshackled freedom of person and habit was a prerequisite; as an imaginary artist-nature keeps her poets' and story-tellers' children to the last-he felt, if he ever reasoned it out, that he must gang his ain gait, whether it seemed promising, or the reverse, to kith, kin, or alien. So his wanderings were not only the most natural but in the wisest consonance with his creative dreams. Wherever he went, he found something essential for his use, breathed upon it, and returned it fourfold in beauty and worth. The longing of the Norseman for the tropic, of the pine for the palm, took him to the South Seas. There, too, strange secrets were revealed to him, and every island became an island of voices. Indeed it is an additional proof of

Stevenson's artistic mission that in his careless, careful, liberty of life, he was an artist no less than in his work. He trusted to the impulse that possessed him-that which so many literary men have conscientiously disobeyed and too late found themselves in reputable bondage to circumstances. The real mission of Stevenson, as so admirably illustrated in Mr. Japp's work, was not only to recreate the story of adventure but to interfuse a subtler purpose-the search for character, the analysis of mind and soul. As he approached nearer and nearer to the high spiritual goal set before him, the summons came. Between the sunrise of one day and sunset of the next he exchanged the forest study for the mountain grave. There, as he had sung his own wish, he lies "under the wide and starry sky." If there was something of his own romance, so exquisitely capricious, in the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, so, also, the poetic conditions are satisfied in his death, and in the choice of his burial-place upon the top of Pala in the South Sea Islands.

Of Stevenson's personality, Mr. Japp's first meeting with him affords a fine picture. “Mr. Stevenson's is, indeed, a very picturesque and striking figure. Not so tall probably as he seems at first sight from his extreme thinness, but the pose and air could not be otherwise described than distinguished. Head of fine type, carried well on the shoulders and in walking with the impression of being a little thrown back; long brown hair, falling from under a broadish-brimmed Spanish form of soft felt hat, Rembrandtesque; loose kind of Inverness cape when walking, and invariable velvet jacket inside the house. You would say at first sight, wherever you saw him, that he was a man of intellect, artistic and individual, wholly out of the common. His face is sensitive, full of expression, though it could not be called strictly beautiful. It is longish, especially seen in profile, and features a little irregular; the brow at once high and broad. A hint of vagary, and just a hint in the expression, is qualified by the eyes, which are set rather far apart from each other, as seems, and with a most wistful, and at the same time possibly a merry. impish expression arising over that, yet frank and clear, piercing, but at the same time steady, and fall on you with a gentle radiance and animation as he speaks. Sometimes he has the look of the Ancient Mariner, and could fix you with his glittering eye, as he points his sentences with a movement of his thin, white forefinger, when this is not monopolized with the almost incessant cigarette. There is a faint suggestion of a hair-brained sentimental trace on his countenance, but controlled, after all, by good Scotch sense and shrewdness."

WHAT MAKES A "GOOD TIME"?

It was a rainy evening toward the end of the summer, and four or five families of friends who had been spending a month together in the country had gathered about the Delands' fire. Something

-perhaps it was the combination of the rain without and the glowing fire within, perhaps it was the thought of autumn and work-seemed to put everybody in a reminiscent mood, and for an hour or so the talk ran upon the doings of their nearly ended holiday.

"If holidays could only last forever!" Maud sighed.

"Then they wouldn't be holidays," somebody retorted, quickly.

"But what makes good times?" some one else asked.

Their hostess rose with an exclamation of pleasure.

"What a fine question!" she exclaimed. "Here are pencils and paper. Suppose we each answer it, or try to, and then we'll read the answers aloud. Each one may name three requisites for a good time."

The plan took at once, and for a few minutes pencils were busy; then the papers were collected and read aloud. The answers, as was to be expected, revealed very diverse temperaments. The curious thing was that a most unexpected process of elimination began with the reading.

"A book and a shady nook and time to enjoy them,' was the first response. "A book and time to read it would be enough," some one amended.

"Oh, just a book!" a third corrected. "Sometimes I think you enjoy it most if you can only steal a few minutes at a time."

"Health, a fine day, and all the world before you," another read, to be answered by a chorus of protests over the fine day. Did they not often have their best times on rainy ones? And a fragile girl in the corner added softly, "You don't even have to wait for health."

So the papers went on, and finally a vote was taken, and the things most conducive to good times were decided to be a happy heart, friends, and nature. It was the girl in the corner who made her discovery then.

"Why," she exclaimed, "I've so been pitying people who couldn't go away for holidays, but after all, the best three things are within reach of everybodyif he wants them enough!"

The hostess, gathering up the scattered papers, smiled as if something had pleased her.

The path of the country editor, who is also necessarily business manager, is sometimes illumined with a ray of real pleasure. Second only to the gratification of a steadily increasing circulation is the satisfaction of having a self-appointed assistant who, when the spirit moves him, sends in a rattling good editorial for the next issue.

Gil Gilder, of the Weekly Record, had reason to be happy and he was. The circulation was rapidly increasing, and nearly every editorial was contributed by a fairly good writer who had plenty of time and a fresh crop of ideas every week. It would be difficult to say whether the recipt of a new subscription or of an editorial from Grin Grinley afforded the editor the greater degree of pleasure, but this much is certain-the editor waxed fat and bore with him an air of prosperity and contentment. The income from the Record now enabled him to employ a reporter, also an office man who was gradually getting the managerial end of the business well in hand, so that the editor was beginning to find a little time for recreation.

Grin Grinley always sent in his articles on Thursday, allowing ample time for publication on the following Saturday. One week there was an unexpected change of programme. Friday evening arrived and no editorial had been received. The editor became uneasy. Grinley had been writing the leaders so regularly that the editor had become rusty, in fact rather lazy. The foreman of the composing room was looking for copy, it being about time to make up the form and go to press. editor had to do something and do it quickly. The question for him to decide was how to fill the usual editorial space in the least time possible. A bright idea flashed into his mind and relieved

The

the situation. Taking up his pencil with his customary deliberation, he wrote as the heading of his article: "The Hidden Hand," and proceeded thus: "The man behind the Mayor of this town is well known to the Record. We could publish his correct name and address if we wished to. We could also make a pretty close estimate of the cost to the taxpayers of having in the Mayor's chair a man whose every act is determined and directed by a hidden hand. This is what we think of the man behind the scene, who is the real Mayor of this town." About a column and a half of dots and dashes and dashes and dots followed. The article made a great hit. It was looked upon as the forerunner of an exposure of the corrupt influences which dominated the municipality. Public spirited citizens began to demand an investigation into the gifts of franchises to corporations, the levying of unfair assessments on the taxpayers, and the appointment of incompetent and corrupt officials.

When Grin Grinley saw the Record with nearly all its editorial space taken up with dots and dashes, he rushed to his wife and exclaimed: "What do you think that fellow Gilder has done?"

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Grinley. "He has butchered my editorial most brutally. brutally. He has stolen the heading, written in a few lines minus sense or reason, and filled up the balance with dots, dashes, semicolons, hyphens, and pe

riods."

"Grin, don't forget yourself," said his better half. "Remember what I told you some weeks ago. I said that as long as you happened to write in such a way as met with Gilder's approval, he would publish your articles, but the moment you happened to write something that might hit some of his friends in a tender