There is now and then a false note as when "is" is made to rhyme with "bliss" (p. 35, 41); "gone" with "flown" (p. 49); and the translations are less successful than original efforts.

There are some touches of poetic imagery and fire as is seen in "The making of a poet."

For years he walked amid the human throng,
Unseeing and alone, for, fixed and far,
His gaze was set upon a wondrous star.

He yearned to catch some echoes of the song
The spheres sing in the heavens; strove full long
To shape in flaming speech the thoughts that are
So great and high that words their beauty mar;
But ever failed, for he was weak and wrong.

At last among the toiling ones he wrought

To earn life's simple bread with sweat and tears,
And learned to feel their common woes and mirth.

Then straight the words were wedded to the thought,
The strains divine resounded in his ears,

And lo! the star had come to dwell on earth.

ABNER DANIEL. By Will N. Harben. New York & London, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1902, pp. 312.

The scene of this story lies chiefly among the mountains of North Georgia and turns on the propensity of Alfred Bishop to invest in lands with the expectation of a coming railroad. His plans seem to fail and bring with them difficulties for his son Alan who is in love with Dolly Barclay.

Alan's friend, Rayburn Miller, is a sharp, shrewd lawyer, whose maneouverings with the President of the Southern Land & Timber Company, form a striking part of the story. Miller does not believe in love, but when he meets Alan's pretty sister, he not only becomes deeply smitten, but all his theories against love vanish.

Abner Daniel, from whom the book is named, is Alan's bachelor uncle. His dry sayings show a good deal of philosophy, though at times they seem somewhat irreligious. Another original character is Pole Baker, who is a born

wire puller and whose recovery of the money is one of the interesting features of the volume. His chicken trade is a marvel of sharpness and his wire pulling and uncle Abner's speech to carry the town meeting in favor of granting the right of way to the railroad, are quite amusing.

Such words as "pine blank," "shindig," "passle,” and "marster" are familiar to Southern ears, and the dialect of the mountaineers is fully given. Mr. Harben is rather severe on the society young men of Atlanta, and he makes a sly rebuke to ladies' ball dresses when he alludes to a dance with "Miss Fewclothes," of Rome, Ga.

The entire volume is interesting and shows both originality and thought, besides a good deal of quiet humor. MCDONALD FURMAN.

Privateer, Sumter County, S. C.

Miss Mary H. Girardeau, of Sumter, S. C., who has been for thirteen years, a teacher, contributed to educational literature an amusing and interesting little booklet entitled "Pupils Potpourri," which is a collection of pupils' mistakes innocently spoken and written.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE VIRGINIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, January, 1903, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 225-335+10 pp. of membership list, quarterly, $5.00 yearly, $1.50 a copy, Richmond, Va.

Contents: 1. Va. newspapers in public libraries (4 pp., con'td); 2. Slave owners, Westmoreland County, Va., 1782 (7 pp., 410 names, 4,536 slaves, 136 carriage wheels); 3. House of burgesses, 1683, 1684 (3 pp. of names not in the Colonial Va. Register); 4. Henry County, 1776-1800 (2 pp., con'td mainly items of payments); 5. Abridgement of Va. laws, 1694 (13 pp., concluded, dealing with tanners, tobacco culture, wolf bounty, weights and measures, formation of new counties); 6. Pioneer days in Alleghany County, by W. A. McAllister (4 pp., Indian fights, a Va. heroine; pleasant reading, but not scientific history as no references); 7. List of tithables in Northampton Co., Va., 1666 (5 pp., 424 names; 372 white, 52 negro; estimated population of 1272); 8. Va. in 1636-8 (10 pp., showing how Va. was loyal to Charles I. because her people were busy and prosperous); 9. John Brown letters (10 pp. show feeling at the time); 10. Ferrar papers (8 pp., 2 letters from Governor Yeardley, 1621, and one from John Pory; bearing on Va. matters, tho not of much significance); II. Va. gleanings in England (4 pp., notes made by H. G. Waters when engaged on New England genealogies); 12. Va. militia in Revolution (3 pp., accounts); 13. Letters of William Proctor (13 pp., 2 letters, 1739, 1740, when he was librarian at Westover; chiefly private interest); 14. Genealogy (II pp., Brooke, Herndon, Cocke, Gray, Bowie, Robb, RoBards, Farrar, Lindsay, Mirror families); 15. Notes and Queries (14 pp.); 16. Reviews (11 pp.; 7 pages on Curtis's True Jefferson

which is aptly characterized as the "irruption of yellow journalism into biography;" with wealth of knowledge, reviewer shows up Curtis's ignorance and recklessness).

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY, January, 1903, Vol. II., No. 3, pp. 149-216, $3.00 yearly, $1.00 singly, Williamsburg, Va.

Contents: 1. Finances of the College in 1755-1765 (4 PP., copy of original accounts of William and Mary College); 2. Letter book of Francis Jerdone (8 pp., business, local gossip of Va. Colony 1748-1751, by this Scotch merchant who, born 1730, came over 1746, died 1771); 3. Governor Nicholson to the Board of Trade (8 pp., Feb. 4, 1699, official account of matters); 4. Old letters from Va. Co. records (4 pp., 3 letters, 2 1652, one 1705; chiefly personal matters); 5. Walls of the College (6 pp., 4 letters to prove that original walls of William and Mary College building still remain); 6. Journal of Alexander Macaulay (11 pp., lively account, sharp comment, keen observation, of trip from Louisa Co., Va., to Yorktown in 1783); 7. Early tombs (4 pp., inscriptions of Ball family, 18th century); 8. Journal of Col. James Gordon (11 pp., 1760, daily happenings); 9. Genealogical matter (9 pp., Lee, Heath, Miller, Martin, Guerant, Eustace, Brooke, Burton families); 10. Notes (3 pp.).

THE WEST VIRGINIA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE, January, 1903, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 93, quarterly, $1.00 yearly, 25 cts. singly, Charleston, W. Va.

Contents: 1. Frontier Counties of W. Va., by W. S. Laidley (15 pp., almost entirely on statutory formation of them); 2. Dunmore War, by E. O. Randall (22 pp., an account of battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, extracted from Randall's pamphlet on the Dunmore War; effort to be rhetorical, nothing scientific); 3. Records relating to the Van Metre, Dubois, Shepard, Hite and allied families, by S. G. Smyth

(11 pp., partly from church records tho sources not clearly indicated); 4. Early settlement of Friends in the Valley of Virginia, by K. Brown (5 pp., on church records, tho not explicit); 5. Our Scotch-Irish Ancestors, by J. L. Miller (7 pp., based on such secondary sources as Hanna, Wise, Fiske; strung on poor rhetoric); 6. Chronological sketch of Colonel David Shepherd, by H. M. Foster (12 pp., references frightfully indefinite, as "court records," "land records," "Shepherd MSS." [5 vols. of these]); 7. Rev. James Moore Brown, by W. T. Price (14 pp., glowing rhetoric, weak history).

The Editor, W. S. Laidley, appeals (3 pp.) with State Legislature for "a more hearty appropriation" for enlarging the museum already begun, and for more publishing. The cost only of printing the magazine is now borne by the State, but greater means are needed for gathering and arranging material.

THE TRANSALLEGHENY HISTORICAL MAGAZINE, October, 1902, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 72, quarterly, $2.00 yearly, 50 cents singly, Morgantown, W. Va.

Contents: 1. Pioneer Settlements on the western waters (29 pp., records of land grants, 1765-1781 chiefly); 2. Merrimac-Monitor battle, by S. T. Brooke (12 pp. "personal recollections," no important facts added; impartial criticisms of several accounts); 3. Point Pleasant, by D. A. M'Culloch (13 pp., sketchy essay on chief events and persons of this town on site of famous battle of October 10, 1774); 4. Early marriage licenses in Monongalia county (7 pp., dates of 1794-1802, only a few before 1796 as most of records burned then); 5. Early orchards in West Virginia, by Hu. Maxwell (6 pp., that Washington planned an apple orchard on his Ohio river land in 1773, but perhaps first orchard started by Jacob Westfall about 1772).