The Diary of a Goose Girl. By Kate Douglas Wiggin. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., N. Y.

Does Miss Wiggin ever write a dull page? Hardly. It would be hard for her to do so. This clever woman is constantly bubbling over with wit and wisdom. Her Penelope stories were most delightful chronicles of her experiences, especially in Ireland, and now The Diary of a Goose Girl, while not dealing with the larger themes of national and racial peculiarities gives us in what is substantially an allegory, a string of bright thoughts on many of the subjects which the world is busy with. The education of geese on the principles of Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Herbert Spencer is a flash of satire on present day educational methods; the feathered womenfolks mounting the ladder with the comments of the cocks below, is a delicious petite comédie humaine; Cannibal Ann, the hen that eats her own eggs, is a picture of what happens unhappily too often among humans; and the motherly old sitter, whom she wittily describes as an Orphan Asylum, because she takes under her wide wings every dilapidated waif, even to the products of the "incubytor," is the reverse of the last picture; while the dejected old grey gander, once the leader of the flock, but now regarded with disdain by his spouse, who affects society with other geese, is photographic of family conditions that often obtain. The arrival of the Man of the North to take the Girl off to other work than that of looking after geese is full of fun and winds up the interesting study.

MARQUETTE AND DE SOTO.(1)

WAS MARQUETTE A DISCOVERER ?

As we enter the capitol at Washington, there within the large rotunda we see the famous picture of the American painter, Powell. We behold upon the canvas a band of Spanish warriors and adventurers—some arrayed in gay attire, bedecked with gaudy plumage and mounted upon richly caparisoned horses; some clad in rusty armor and carrying the old flint-lock muskets of the fifteenth century. A cross is being erected near a large river; cannons are booming. Groups of dusky savages watch the strangers from their boats or cluster around them on the shore. We approach closer to the picture and read the title: "The Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto in 1539." Then passing from the rotunda to Statuary Hall we see carved in the whitest of marble the figure of a priest; it is a figure truly inspiring-the most artistic statue in the whole collection. Again we approach and read the title :. "James Marquette, who with Louis Joliet, Discovered the Mississippi in 1673."

Here we meet conflicting claimants. The Mississippi was discovered in 1539 and 1673; it was discovered by De Soto and by Marquette. To whom does the honor belong? Does the discovery of the one detract from that of the other? What right has Marquette to the honors of discoverer since De Soto stood upon the banks of the great

(1) This article came to the MESSENGER office before the publication of Mr. Thwaite's life of Marquette, which we review on another page. We are pleased to see that the biographer agrees with the conclusions arrived at in this paper, giving to the Jesuit the honors of a discoverer. He writes: "Joliet and Marquette, regardless of De Soto or any other possible predecessor, sought the Mississippi in the true spirit of scientific exploration; they were about to open the door to the greatest of continental water-ways, a door which was never again to be closed. To them therefore as to Columbus we accord the chief honor of a well-planned discovery, which was of world-wide significance." Page 139.

river of the New World a hundred years before Marquette was born? Is the title "discoverer" a misnomer when applied to the Jesuit missionary? Should not the sculptor have carved the word "explorer" on the pedestal of the statue in the capitol?

In an oration delivered at Mackinac, August 1, 1900, General J. C. Black spoke of Father Marquette as follows:

"Pere Marquette was not in the strict sense a discoverer; nearly a quarter of a century before he saw the Mississippi, De Soto, the

In this map the Mississippi, if marked at all, is smaller than the tributaries of the St. Lawrence and smaller than several streams which flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

dauntless Spaniard, was buried in its vast tide; later on Moscoso had crossed and recrossed it, and the courts of Europe were familiar with the story of the great river; many men had told Marquette of its upper channel, and from their accounts he had prepared the map which bears his name before he stood upon its banks. But he was a dauntless explorer, a thoughtful observer and a faithful chronicler; primus inter pares, he is in the front rank with Polo and Livingston and Stanley; he was in the race of civilization; leader in the ways