"It was the saddest voice I had ever heard." His punishment begins: "The soul of the Hindu priest passed into the body of the cobra," "and the woe of my punishment seemed to stretch through the years that were gone, and forever into the future."

Finally the young American student secures the mummy of the Hindu girl he had found in the cave and takes it to New York to see if he can revive it according to his dream and the instructions contained in the paper he had found in the cave, and had translated. Thence he goes with "it" and his sister to the mountains of Colorado. Then we have the description of the experiments in following out the Hindu priest's method of restoration of life. Interest is well sustained, and the probableness of the whole thing made to appear. She is made to live, but is like a little child-she, the wise Uma. Then begin the long watch and wait for memory and intelligence to develop or return. The development of his theory of a dead and living brain in one head is interesting, unique. The mingling of "holy writ," of various gods and bibles, in awakening brain is truly well done and effective. As he watches her development, misgivings as to the wisdom of calling her back to life stir him; "I was beginning to realize what it is to be responsible for the existence of a human being." One day he told her of a part of his life in India.

"Do not stop," she said wistfully. "You make me see many. things."

I thought of the well at Cawnpore, and its memorial garden, of the garrulous old soldier from whom I had the story of the massacre; and I related to her incidents of the mutiny, when life was a little thing, and men and women rose superior to death, coveting it as a relief from indescribable horrors. I pictured to her the "Massacre Ghaut," where I had sat and translated the story of Gargya Balaki. The yellow Ganges had been pleasant to me; its low banks more sightly than where the bushes had masked the boats that were covered with luxuriant shrubbery, and nowhere were they served to decoy the English soldiers from their miserable fort. For the first time Uma heard of Nana Sahib's treachery to those who had received him after as a welcome guest. She heard of the days of heat and carnage, of pestilence and thirst, and how the confiding English forgot their sufferings in their joy over the deliverance Nana had planned only for their destruction. I told how the men filled the boats they believed would save them; and of the crash of ambushed cannon, the roll of musketry, the death cries, the death silence. I could not touch upon the indescribable ending of that awful drama, when women and children were butchered, and cast indiscriminately into the well from the bloody house. Yet I told her of Havelock's men, trying in spite of floods and heat, and the odds against them, to force a way to their relief, and how they wept when, too late, they reached the well, and swore vengeance, and treasured hairs from the slaughtered women and children to keep them to their vows.

Then I spoke of a lady I met in Cawnpore. her face very gentle, her voice noticeably soft. through the furnace of these summer months,

Her hair was white, She, too, had passed when hope was gone;

and once she and her husband had promised each other that the last two shots from his pistol should be, one for her and one for him. Then I would have stopped but Uma said:

"Your words are full of strength. They send strange heats through me. Everything seems larger, and life nobler, while you speak. Death is not fearful when we use it to befriend us."

He touches in a new and fascinating way the idea of the transference of thought-of the action of one mind upon another. The girl recites indiscriminately from the newly learned Bible and the half forgotten Vedas:

"Christ said: 'But I say unto you that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.'

"Buddha said: 'When a good man is reproached, he is to think within himself, These are certainly good people since they do not beat me. If they begin to beat him with fists, he will say, They are mild and good because they do not beat me with clubs. If they proceed to this, he says, They are excellent, for they do not strike me dead. If they kill him, he dies saying, How good they are in freeing me from this miserable body!'"

The story preserves throughout the idea that whether in India or America, whether 2500 years ago or to-day, whether under Buddha or Christ, woman, as sister, wife, or mother, is ever and always an automaton. Man is the world, the "lord," the "master," the "teacher"; she is ever and always his pupil and slave. He lives for and because of himself-she for and because of him. Whether intentionally or not, the author shows also that most of her sorrows and sufferings and many of man's are due to this single fact-the dog-like faithful confidence and belief in and obedience to his willthe obliteration of her individuality. I am not at all certain that this thought or intention is in the author's mind, but that it is the effect left upon the mind of the reader is undoubted.

HELEN H. GARDENER.

A WOMAN WHO DID NOT.*

This is a novel having, so far as I can understand, no conceivable good purpose and therefore no excuse for existence. It has not even the merit of good or commendable literary style. Its tone throughout is, I think, immoral, and whatever lesson its pages may teach will be bad, more or less degrading to the reader of either sex. The book is an insult to decent, intelligent womanhood, and it is, or should be, therefore, also an insult to decent, intelligent manhood. Its heroine toys with the morally doubtful, and its hero explicitly regards virtuous living as too monotonous, and vice, if gilded, as a pleasant refuge from ennui. C. SELDEN SMART.

"A Woman Who Did Not," by Victoria Crosse. Cloth; price $1. Roberts Brothers, Boston, Mass.

THE LAND OF NADA.

This book may be read with profit and pleasure by the young. The story is wholesome and improving and the perusal of it will strengthen the moral fibre of the youthful reader. The land here described is a land of genii, fairies, and goblins over whom rule a kind-hearted if somewhat dull-witted monarch, King Whitcombo, and his lovable consort, Queen Haywarda, who had a “sweet way of mothering everything and everybody." This good king and queen had an only son, Prince Trueheart, a lad of fourteen, who unfortunately was blind; but he was the happy possessor of a violin which a fairy had given him at his birth. He acquired so complete a mastery of this magic instrument that "by the witchery of his harmonies he sent wild thrills" through his absorbed and breathless audience. These "exultant thrills became so ecstatic that they trickled and dropped off in round beads of gold" out of which the goblins made all sorts of beautiful things. This skill of the prince in discoursing sweet music is turned to fine account by the author in the sequel.

Visitors from neighboring lands frequented the court of King Whitcombo and Queen Haywarda. Among these Prince Arthur, Prince Kneebaby and his two sisters, the Princesses Helen and Wimpsy, who were respectively six and seven years old, were especially welcome. How Prince Arthur was the means of bringing great happiness to the royal family is related in a very entertaining way.

As one reads of the beauty and resources of the Land of Nada, one no longer wonders that King Whitcombo and Queen Haywarda were led to give up their home in their native land-the home of a long line of ancestors-and seek to develop a land so rich in possibilities. A balmy climate and gorgeous flowers increased the attractiveness of this wonderful land, and here for years they lived a delightful life, until in the lapse of years a great sorrow came to them. The few menial offices were performed by goblins. When, for instance, the king desired buttermilk, Ingram would hasten to the meadow where grazed the graceful cattle watched over by fairies, and, approaching a pale-white cow, would obtain the desired beverage by using the magic song:

Gentle Seafoam, soft as silk,

Give the king the buttermilk.

By similar magic songs Babe would get delicious milk, rich cream, and excellent butter for the queen's table. But ordinary mortals who inhabited the town had, in those days as so often in our days, to be content with the blue milk of Harebell, the pale-blue cow.

"The Land of Nada," by Bonnie Scotland. Pp. 115; cloth 75 cents, paper 25 cents. The Arena Publishing Company, Boston.

Gillia, however, a cow whose body was the color of crushed strawberries, yielded the most wonderful products, products that are toothsome to the most fastidious youngsters.

The beauty of the land of Nada was enhanced by a bewildering variety of trees," forming a vast breadth and wealth of sloping orchards and shady groves." In the centre of the garden stood a strangely curious tree that yielded a bountiful supply of three different kinds of lemonade. This tree was the cause of trouble, as once upon a time was another tree that grew in a still fairer garden. From other trees delicious fruits were canned and preserved in a truly remarkable way. But the most wonderful tree was the genealogical tree that stood before the queen's window. In its branches grew seats like swinging chairs, where the king and queen and Prince Trueheart would sit for hours, the parents describing to the blind prince the great variety of beautiful things they saw, while he in turn would charm them with sweet music from his violin; and "as the soft strains from the little magic instrument floated through the air, the very birds paused to listen and ceased their carols."

The full-dress parade of hens resplendent with all the vivid hues of the rainbow from deepest purple to palest lavender, "drilled by gay and martial roosters of the same hue as the divisions of which they had charge," is an episode that children will particularly enjoy. But perhaps the most wonderful event that occurred in this land of wonders is yet to be mentioned. Amid the branches of the wonderful genealogical tree where, as has been said, the king and queen and Prince Trueheart passed many delightful hours, there grew, in the course of time, a wonderfully beautiful cradle that the fairies decorated as only fairies can; and into it “one little blue-eyed darling fluttered downward - down, down, down until the soft whiterobed form nestled within the cradle rocking there in the boughs of the genealogical tree." Under direction of the fairy queen the flowers in an exquisitely melodious song hailed the advent of the babe. Kings and queens, fairies and goblins, came from far and near to pay their respects to the beautiful little Princess Dorothy.

How this enchanted land was shut off from other lands and securely guarded by a monster genie; how the genie Strictumtaskum-trabajo, the servant of the lemon tree and the guardian of the underground goblins, instigated by the lemon tree brought trouble upon the land; how the enchanted hawks instructed by this wicked goblin spirited away little Dorothy; how Aunt Hope consoled the queen; how Prince Trueheart earned gold for the redemption of his sister; how Dorothy, after being well cared for by a tenderhearted goblin maiden, was finally restored; and how several betrothals were happily celebrated; lo, is not all this and very much more recorded in this delectable little volume?

Nor is the book devoid of humor. Even older readers will smile as they read, to learn that there was not perfect equality in Nada; some could have lemonade; some, only picnic lemonade, or circus lemonade. The ladies there, too, observed the fashion of wearing "very full sleeves to their gowns, so large, indeed, that they were obliged to enter church doors sideways." And it will doubtless occasion surprise that under the lovely Haywarda society was broken up into sets. "The hens were of different colors, and each remained in her own set. This is the reason that when they wished to sit they fell into the way of calling it set, because they were so particular about going outside of their own circle."

The typographical execution of the volume is admirable. The healthy tone pervading the story will be noted with pleasure by parents who select their children's reading with scrupulous care. The book will be an acceptable present to any child whose taste has not been perverted by devouring sensational stories.

E. H. WILSON.

ROBERTA.*

It is a common remark that the market is to-day flooded with cheap and trashy literature. But it is also true that never before were so many noble men and women endeavoring, through the medium of either the novel or works of a more serious character, to uplift humanity and rescue the submerged tenth, by calling attention to the hideous injustice of our social laws, and bringing before the minds of those who are willing to see, the wrongs which exist in our midst, but which the easy-going sophists who are not willing to see, comfort themselves by believing to be necessary evils.

One of these noble writers is Miss Blanche Fearing, who is already known to the public through her works, "The Sleeping World," "In the City by the Lake," and other volumes. But in "Roberta," the work now under consideration, Miss Fearing has surpassed all her previous efforts. To my mind, it is one of the strongest social novels which has appeared since Victor Hugo wrote his masterpiece, "Les Miserables." Indeed, while not being in any sense of the word imitative, the history of Roberta Green, the heroine of the book, is strikingly similar to that of the hero of "Les Miserables," Jean Valjean.

The scene of the story is laid in the new Chicago, or the Chicago which sprang from the ruins of the great fire of Oct. 9, 1871. Roberta, the heroine, is the daughter of simple, honest, industrious working people, although her father, John Green, is superior in thought and refined feeling to the average workingman. For his

*"Roberta," by Blanche Fearing. Cloth; pp. 424; price $1. Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, Ill.