of railroads (pp. 14); Industrial arbitration (pp. 15); Mercantile marine subsidies (pp. 100, including index).

In other government departments or in the universities and colleges, or in other walks of life, there are competent specialists that could have taken the manuscript, made additions from their own knowledge, prefixed a reading guide, classified and graded the works, pointed out the importance of main types, and sized up leading ones. The fees would have been small, a mere fraction of increased cost, but the library would have then known that it was doing something authoritative. As it is it is pouring out cash for simple mechanical copying. It is only by this union of clerical routine and expert skill that a first class bibliography will be made, but every branch of this great government ought to feel it a solemn duty to have and do nothing but the best.

THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK. By W. E. B. DuBois. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 12 mo., pp. viii+265, cloth.

In point of literary excellence this collection of articles by Dr. DuBois is entitled to a place in the first rank of the varied and ever-increasing literature of the "race problem." To the student of the question, to him who is concerned with more than its superficial manifestations, this book is an interesting and valuable study; to him who is looking to the most highly educated, easily the most intellectual, man identified with the negro race, for a deliverance containing something of helpfulness and hope, it is a distinct disappointment.

Throughout the book is tinctured with bitterness, a bitterness unfortunate even though pardonable and easily understood by those who are acquainted with something of the life of its author. It is at once a protest and a plea; a protest against the identification of the individual with the mass, a plea for public and personal consideration un

affected by questions of color or race. This does not mean to my comprehension of the book an appeal for "social equality" between white and black, as the world understands that term, a breaking down of social barriers between the races as races, but rather a plea for individual treatment based upon individual character and deserts.

This runs through the book and dominates its entire tone, and after one has finished it and put it down, let him turn back to its very beginning if he would reason for himself upon the question of the attitude of the white race toward those whom the author calls black. He may learn there something of the force of instinct and heredity which exhibits itself in childhood, and so often in maturer years stifles even the voice of sympathy and reason. These pages tell that it was not as a man seeking a school in the South that the author first learned to feel that he "was different from the others;" it was in far off New England, and even as a child, that he first awakened to the presence of "the shadow of the veil."

The statement of the position of Booker T. Washington may be fair enough in its essentials, possibly, but when we read his criticism of it we are prone to ask, "What, then, would Dr. DuBois have done?" To appeal to reason and sympathy is well enough, but what of a propaganda based upon "demands?" It matters not how much of abstract "justice" or "right" may be behind the move, the history of a long series of "demands," enacted into laws and backed by force, is so recent that he who runs may read the fate of similar efforts in the South. Dr. DuBois is too thoughtful a man to countenance any such suggestion,-yet until one is prepared to go as far as may be necessary along the line of insistence it is difficult to understand the wisdom of taking issue with Principal Washington's course.

Much might be said by way of moralizing upon the frame of mind which leads to a casual reference to Sam Hose as

having been "crucified," so also might we upon such a sketch as that entitled "Of the Coming of John,”—but the moralizing would be as barren of any possible good as was the incorporation of this story in the book.

Despite the cry of "negrophobist" already raised in some quarters to anticipate the suggestion, the fact remains that to one reared among the negroes of the South-to one who is living a life of daily contact and association with the masses of these people-to one who has enjoyed their confidences and listened to their recitals of grievances and wrongs personal and peculiar to themselves, to this man it is not "the souls of black folk" thus laid bare. Herein may the really thoughtful of those who consider America's "race problem" find food for sober reflection,—for here may they learn, perhaps for the first time, that possibly already this problem is become "the problem of the color line." Here also may they read of life that is tragedy in itself,-tragedy that needs not the setting of the stage to evoke the pity of the human heart. To such as these this book suggests a moral upon its every page; by the many to whom "the problem" they so knowingly discuss presents but a single hue, it will be used to bolster up time worn theories of "the negro question." ALFRED HOLT STONE.

A GIRL OF VIRGINIA. By Lucy M. Thruston. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1902. D. pp. 5+306, cloth, $1.50.

To the college man who has not yet forgotten the days of his youth this book will recall many familiar scenes and characters. The story here told occurs in and around the University of Virginia. There is plenty of out door life, football, horseback riding, a fox hunt where the poor little beast is dumped out of a bag and given a short shrift for freedom, some boisterous raillery which students call fun

and a little study when there is nothing else to do, a severe and dignified professor, absorbed in his books, leading a life apart from his fellows, impracticable, idealistic and absentminded, a student of law, a gentleman of the country, a few negroes and the professor's pretty daughter make up the principal characters. That Frances Holloway was a sweet and attractive girl there can be no doubt; that she was also a college flirt is just as clear as the solemn declaration of the author that she was not. If not a flirt she must have been a fool which is quite impossible; if not a flirt why the scene on the stair? Was that only sympathy for the hero of the gridiron or does the author think men are so stupid as to take pretty girls in their arms and kiss them when the latter are unwilling? If not a flirt why could Frances feel so keenly the chasm looming up between herself and Lawson and cry her eyes out at Christmas for him only to be in love with another at Easter? Gentle reader, have you never known the prototype of Frances in the college town? Have you never known the girl who had a new engagement every season and hardly had time to fall out with one lover before she was in with another? Such was Frances Holloway and yet she was not a flirt! The moral of the story, if it has one, is drawn from the evils of divorce.

A TAR-HEEL BARON. By Mabel Shippie Clarke Pelton (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1903. D., PP. 354, cloth, $1.50), with five illustrations by Edward Stratton Holloway. Second edition.

This is a story of the North Carolina mountains. The scenes are in and near Asheville and the characters are said to be based on what the author has seen in her residence among the Blue Ridge. They are mostly what are called for want of a better name mountain whites. There is the usual amount of moonshining and illicit distilling, while the marshal and Federal judge play no inconspicuous parts. These

characters talk in a language which is almost unintelligible and which the natives would never recognize. No native North Carolinian ever talked as these mountaineers are made to talk. For the real North Carolina dialect the author of this book is referred to Worthington's Broken Sword. The hero of the story is aself exiled German baron, Frederich von Rittenheim, the heroine a sweet North Carolina girl who rides horses to perfection and bewitches all who come under her influence. The story ends happily after a killing and a shocking denouement. The strong character is Henry Morgan, the country doctor.

JONATHAN FISH AND HIS NEIGHBORS. By Hu Maxwell. The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W. Va., 1902. O., cloth, pp. 110.

This little volume is made up of six stories, some of which are racy of the soil and mountains of West Virginia while others have another habitat or are general in character. There is no attempt at dialect but considerable success is attained in the portrayal of character. Jonathan Fish himself is a good example of the slow moving, careless, neverdo-well poor white who sympathized with the North in the Civil War but was driven into the armies of the South by the tyranny of the representatives of the government. This story furnishes a strong picture of parental affection and hope in an only son. "The deserter's child" is a touching story of winning success in spite of a lowly beginning; "First Impressions" is a psychological study in which the story of the man who went fishing on Sunday and suffered the pangs of hell for his sin will awake a responsive chord in the hearts of many a man who was fortunate enough to have pious training in his youth.