publications issued by Harper and Brothers. His best prose work is contained in the idyllic Prue and I (1856); in the Potiphar Papers (1854); in the essays collected from the Editor's Easy Chair, which he conducted for a number of years for Harper's Magazine; and in his popular Orations and Addresses. He carried his idealistic philosophy into politics and business in such a way as to set a very high standard for his contemporaries and at the same time to give a more than temporary value to his writings. He wrote one novel, Trumps (1862), but the delicate and idyllic Prue and I, in which the imaginative element of fiction and the intimate personal tone of the familiar essay are mingled, stands out above all Curtis's other productions, and may be classed as one of the distinctive American prose masterpieces of the mid-nineteenth century.

Charles Dudley Warner. Charles Dudley Warner (18291900) was born and reared in Massachusetts, but he was educated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, and in law at the University of Pennsylvania; and after practicing his profession for a year in Chicago, he settled permanently in New York to engage in editorial and literary work. His principal prose works are My Summer in a Garden (1870), a collection of pleasing light essays and sketches; Backlog Studies (1872), treating largely of outdoor material; several novels, among them The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Mark Twain; and Being a Boy (1877), a delightfully reminiscent book of his own boyhood. Warner's chief claim to literary distinction is in his genial humor, kindly sentimentality, and perfect sincerity and naturalness of style. Many a young reader has learned to appreciate the art of restrained and yet effective prose through such sketches as "How I Killed a Bear" and "Camping Out." Warner is also often referred to as the editor of The Library of the World's Best Literature (1897).

John Burroughs. Among the recent writers of essays

dealing with natural history and outdoor life in a sympathetic and more or less scientific spirit, the most prominent is John Burroughs (1837-). He was born in Roxbury, New York, and except for a few years devoted to business and travel, he has spent his entire life studying outdoor life at first hand in his rural retreats in New York. He has published a number of excellent books on nature and some discriminating critical essays. Of the dozen or more volumes on nature which Burroughs has produced, perhaps the best are Wake Robin (1871), Birds and Poets (1877), and Locusts and Wild Honey (1879). Though not so well known as a writer of literary criticism, Burroughs is in reality one of our best critics. A recent writer has said that Burroughs's essays on literary subjects "may be classed with the sanest and most illuminating critical work in American literature." His essays have been collected in a volume called Indoor Studies (1889). Burroughs was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic friends and champions of Walt Whitman, and his Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, and Walt Whitman, a Study, are important contributions to the large amount of Whitman criticism which has appeared in England and America in recent years.

Other essayists. To this earlier group of general essayists may be added the names of several writers who have gained distinction by a steady adherence to the more distinctly literary type of essays: William Winter (1836-1917), the distinguished dramatic critic, author of Shakespeare's England (1888), and Gray Days and Gold (1891); Hamilton Wright Mabie (1845-1916), literary editor of The Outlook and author of many books, among them My Study Fire in three volumes, dated respectively 1890, 1891, 1899; Miss Agnes Repplier (1858–), of Philadelphia, who has published more than a dozen volumes, among them Books and Men (1888), Essays in Idleness (1893), Americans and Others (1912); 1 F. L. Pattee, A History of American Literature since 1870, p. 153.

and Paul Elmer More (1864-), whose Shelburne Essays are held by discerning critics to be the most discriminating American critical work of recent years. Mr. More was born in St. Louis and partly educated there, but his best work has been done under the influence of New England and New York environments. To these may be added the names of two of our later presidents, -Theodore Roosevelt (18581919), who was born and reared in New York City, but who spent several years of his life in Montana and the Middle West; and Woodrow Wilson (1856-), who was born in Virginia, but who has lived the greater part of his mature life in New Jersey, where he was for a number of years president of Princeton University and later governor of the state. Roosevelt's best work is to be found in his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885), Ranch Life and Hunting Trail (1888), and The Winning of the West (1889-1896), all of which reflect his interest in Western life. After he became famous in the Spanish-American War, he published The Rough Riders (1899) and The Strenuous Life (1900). He has also written many volumes dealing with his hunting and exploring trip in foreign lands. His last volume, The Great Adventure (1918), is perhaps the best of several books of his dealing with the World War. Wilson has published a number of volumes treating mainly political and historical subjects, among them An Old Master and Other Political Essays (1893), Mere Literature and Other Essays (1893), A History of the American People (1907), and The New Freedom (1913). His great "War Message Address" (April 2, 1917) and his "Flag Day Speech" (June 14, 1917), as well as others of his public addresses, because of their cogency, their wonderful phrasing, their sincere patriotism, and their elemental eloquence, will assuredly take a permanent place in our literary as well as in our political history. In fact, Woodrow Wilson has been hailed throughout the world not only as the spokesman of America but as the foremost statesman of the age.

THE NEW YORK NOVELISTS AND STORY WRITERS

The more important writers of fiction. A long chapter might be devoted to the New York and Middle Atlantic States' writers of fiction, but we shall have to limit our brief comment to a small number of the most notable. Irving and Cooper, the two major writers of fiction in the early New York school, have already been given fuller treatment. To these we may add from the recent school the names of F. Marion Crawford, who, judged both by the wide circulation and the literary value of his fiction, is perhaps the best of the later New York writers; and Stephen Crane, who if not in attainment at least in promise should be given a high rank among our later writers of fiction. O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), one of the most widely read of the twentieth-century writers, was connected in his later years with the New York group; but since he began his career in the South, he is treated elsewhere in this volume as one of the story writers of the South. Το Philadelphia we may assign S. Weir Mitchell and Frank R. Stockton as the most important of the later writers of fiction in that center, and since they were older than Crawford and Crane, we shall take them up first.

S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), though born in Virginia, was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and practically his whole life, was spent in the city of his adoption. Not satisfied with winning fame as a physician, he determined to develop his literary gifts also. He began writing stories just after the Civil War, but it was not until he published Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, in 1897 that he attained a national popularity. The scene of this story was laid in Philadelphia during the "days that tried men's souls," and it is now generally recognized as one of the best of American historical novels. Other novels by Dr. Mitchell worthy of special mention are The Adventures