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BONNY FIFTEEN

THE sea wind waves the garland
Of olive in thy hair,

The sea wind, flown from far land
Of maiden fancies, where

All song shall be love's singing,
No love repentance bringing,
A doubtful, dreamborn star land,
Devoid of death and care.

Thy brown feet press the shingle,
With fretful step and slow,
Thy joys with tears commingle,
Thy passions come and go.
To what high loves aspiring,
What prideful bliss desiring,
Makes thy young blood to tingle,
And thy pale cheek aglow?

The light of play and laughter,
Is dead within thine eyes.
Thy childhood gone, and after,
What shall there be to prize?
Shall evil hours fly fleeter?
Shall stronger wine taste sweeter,
Than that the maiden quaffed, or
Shall woman's craft devise

From hate a cause for loving,
One pang of bliss from pain,
Or, memory removing,

Make peace with peace again?

And sang you ne'er so loudly,

Nor stepped the dance more proudly,

Shall not thy soul, reproving,

Thy cheek with teardrops stain?

Fair dreams of that the world
Denies and childhood craves!

As ships with white sails furled
Glide down the inland waves,

To storms and tall masts crashing,
And rocks, and breakers dashing,

And battered dead men hurled

Ashore to sand-swept graves.

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RECENT FICTION. — I.

We find before us for review this quarter several admirable collections of tales, a few English reprints, some dozen new American novels, none of which are very notable, and a few of which are altogether worthless, a number of new editions of popular novels of the last few years, and some halfdozen important translations.

Of the worthless stories, we are sorry to say the most worthless bears a California imprint. It is called Winklebach's Hotel, and is a confused and inane attempt, ignorant, unintentionally vulgar, and unreadably dull. Paradise is a very different production as far as mere skill in writing is concerned, and has occasionally some really bright points; but it has also occasional vulgarities, and no reason at all for existence. It seems intended for a sort of burlesque on Chicago and divorce. Then there are two sufficiently weak tales, published in a "Fireside Series," with ornate covers — Brother against Brother,s a story of two brothers who took different sides in the Civil War; and In Thralldom, a "psychological study" of a young - or, more properly, a maiden fair who was mesmerized into marrying the wrong man. Both stories have very black and potent villains, very virtuous good people, and very volcanic passions, all depicted with much rhetoric.

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Among the collections of short stories, we strain a point to name South County Neigh bors," for the studies therein contained have in but a few cases enough narrative quality

1 Winklebach's Hotel. By A. M. Fleming. San

Francisco: The Bancroft Company. 1887. For sale

in San Francisco by The Bancroft Company.

2 Paradise. By Lloyd S. Bryce. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1887.

8 Brother against Brother. By John R. Musick. New York: J. S. Ogilvie & Co. 1887.

4 In Thralldom. By Leon Mead. New York: J. S. Ogilvie & Co. 1887.

5 South County Neighbors. By Esther Bernon Carpenter. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

to be called stories. They are rather descriptive and anecdotic sketches of the coun try folk of the Narragansett region. They are conscientious studies, and show incidentally an educated hand, but either the rustics of that district several decades ago were far more uncouth and uninteresting than in other parts of New England, or else the fine insight and sympathy that Mrs. Cooke and Miss Jewett and others have brought to the description of rural Connecticut and Massachusetts has here been wanting. To judge from these "South County people," Roger Williams's experiment in toleration did not work so well in building up a prevalent type of religious character as the less liberal methods of his neighbors; for a sad confusion of squalid and impotent religious vagaries seems to take the place of the steadying force of the "orthodox" church in most New England stories. Free Joe is also a collection of local studies, this time all properly stories also. Some if not all have been in print in periodicals, and no author is better known than Mr. Harris among the half-dozen Southerners who have caught the trick of the modern short tale, and appreciated the value of their home environment as "literary material," and are interpreting the life of planter and negro and "cracker" to an interested North. He has a good method, makes a picturesque story, and doubtless knows his subject; more than this he does not often attain in that line of writing, and of the five sketches in the present volume, "Free Joe" is the only one that is likely, by virtue of significant human truth or pathos, to cling in the reader's mind. We have another volume of his sketches, a fourth edition of one published earlier, Mingo, and other Sketches in Black and White, to which

6 Free Joe, and other Georgian Sketches. By Joel Chandler Harris. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co. 7 Mingo, and other Sketches in Black and White. By Joel Chandler Harris. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1887.

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"Octave Thanet" has no such name among the critics and no such wide circle of readers as the author of "Uncle Remus "; yet we cannot but consider the nine stories contained in Knitters in the Sun' as of decidedly higher literary quality than those in either of Mr. Harris's volumes noticed above. Four of them are also Southern. Indeed, her geographical range is rather unusual. "The Ogre of Ha Ha Bay" is Canadian and bright enough to stand reading a good many times over; "Half a Curse" is of Florida; Arkansas and South Carolina appear in three stories; and the rest are Western. Everywhere the writer has an easy and competent air of knowing her ground, and one is constrained to trust the truthfulness of her drawing; everywhere the thought and manner is not merely admirably well educated and well bred, but speaks of real mental power; and there is a good deal of simple and real human feeling, which bears no suspicion of stage effect.

But the master of short story telling, if one does not desire a serious vein, is undoubt edly Frank Stockton. Nothing could be more inimitably and inexhaustibly delightful than the sheaf of "fanciful tales" collected under title of the first, The Bee-Man of Orn. The nine here included were printed originally as children's stories, but we are disposed to think that older people appreciate even better than children their demure and elusive humor, as they do that of "Alice's Adventures." The book is full of people who are entitled to become classic figures the BeeMan himself, the Languid Youth, the Very Imp, the Griffin and the Minor Canon, Old

1 Knitters in the Sun. By Octave Thanet. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

2 The Bee-Man of Orn, and other Fanciful Tales. By Frank Stockton. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Pipes, the Jolly-cum-pop, and the rest of the genial and plausibly impossible train. Mr. Stockton's sunny fancy has done more than to give a great many people pleasant halfhours from time to time; it has really added a distinct charm to literature, and, so far forth, to life

One more collection of tales remains this time translated from the German. It is called German Fantasies by French Firesides, and the title is explained to mean that the author a distinguished surgeon composed the tales in the evenings spent quartered in French houses while in attendance with the army during the Franco-Prussian War. The tales are mostly of the parable sort, somewhat dreamy and involved, but very pretty, after the German fashion ; some of them are the merest fancies, with a good many suggestions of Andersen. We should judge the translation to be especially good, though we cannot compare with the original

More True than Truthful,* Diane de Breteuille, Only a Coral Girl and Herr Paulus are all reprints from English stories; and the first-named is so exactly like a great many other English stories that it is difficult to find any comment to make on it. The story is of some babies "mixed up" during the Indian mutiny, and getting back to their due rank after proper tribulation and disturbance of the course of true love. Diane de Breteuille is a really pretty idyllic love story of the old-fashioned sort under modern conditions; and Only a Coral Girl has a certain touch of earnestness and sweetness in it that lifts it above the average of the weekly reprint. We see from the last named that

8 German Fantasies by French Firesides. By Richard Leander. Translated from the German by Pauline C. sale in Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co. Lane. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1887. For

More True than Truthful. By Mr. Charles M. Clarke. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1887.

5 Diane de Breteuille. By Hubert E. H. Jerningham. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1887.

6 Only a Coral Girl. By Gertrude Forde. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1888.

7 Herr Paulus: His Rise, his Greatness, and his Fall. By Walter Besant. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1888.

Harper & Brothers are issuing a new series of their "Franklin Square Library" in more manageable form, and with paper covers of a serviceable dull blue color. Herr Paulus, printed in the same form, is ingenious and strong, as was to be expected of Mr. Besant. It is a story of mesmerism and spiritualism, but not of at all a fantastic order.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's two summer stories, "An Old Maid's Paradise" and "Burglars in Paradise," both of which were reviewed in the OVERLAND at their first appearance, are re-issued by the publishers in cloth, with the joint title of Old Maids and Burglars in Paradise. The earlier story is one of the pleasantest things Miss Phelps has ever written; and the other has a good many of the same qualities, though it has some of the usual defects of an attempt to repeat a

success.

A number of other successful novels of a few years past are re-issued by another firm in a "paper series" of convenient form, agreeable appearance, and good type. Mr. Howells's A Modern Instance2 is among these

a book that reviewers and probably most other readers somewhat resented when it first came out, finding in it, in spite of Mr. Howells's great power and charm, a decided tinge of unpleasantness. It seems to hold its own with the public, however, for this is the fourteenth edition; and to the present reviewer, who shared in the dislike mingled with admiration that the book at first excited, it proves to have very permanent qualities of interest and value. There is not much of Mr. Howells's work that will not stand a good deal of re-reading and yield each time some new proof of sound insight and wonderful skill of workmanship.

Miss Howard's second story, Aunt Serena3 is in a twenty-fifth edition in the same paper series, but it was not read first as a serial

1 Old Maids and Burglars in Paradise. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 1887.

For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

2 A Modern Instance. By William D. Howells. Boston Ticknor & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

8 Aunt Serena. By Blanche Willis Howard. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1887.

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by some hundreds of thousands of people, as all Mr. Howells's stories are. It is just the sort of thing, however, to be popular, and it deserves a good deal of its popularity. It came between "One Summer" and Guenn," and marks very well an intermediate stage in growth between the crude yet noticeable little summer novel, and the really strong and tragic study to which its author proved able to rise. It is a girl's story, and girlish enough in mood and thought to provoke an occasional smile; yet there is enough strength and tenderness in the young ardor to touch the reader sincerely, and an occasional real shrewdness that evidently records experience of human nature. It was shrewd to tell a man, "You all think a fresh complexion means purity of soul; often it means only good digestion": and a pretty trick of manner that certain sympathetic folk have is neatly expressed when Miss Lennox hears Gertrude's statement of her age "with a little air of encouragement and approval. seemed as if there were something praiseworthy in the mere fact of being nineteen."

It

Mingo, mentioned above, is in this se ries; and also Maurice Thompson's A Tallahassee Girl, which with the two collections of Mr. Harris's stories, and the Southern portion of "Knitters in the Sun," makes planter, and negro, and cracker seem very frequent figures in the season's fiction. Mr. Thompson's book was what may be called "clever ". though it and its success (it is in a seventh edition) by no means justify the author in assuming to know more about novels than Mr. Howells. There was painstaking work in it, pleasant local color, and a good deal of thought and intelligence; still it is not likely to remain very deeply impressed on a reader's memory. Mr. Howe's A Moonlight Boy,5 is so recent that we should have taken it for one of the new novels occasionally issued in the series, but for the note on the title page that it is a fourth edition. It does not seem to us a very worthy or interesting story,

4 A Tallahassee Girl. By Maurice Thompson. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1887.

6 A Moonlight Boy. By E. W. Howe. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1888.

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