Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

The Commencement Exercises

Occurred June 27 in Center Church. The Valedictorian of '94 was Frank Herbert Chase, and the Salutatorian William Edward Thoms.

The Yale-Harvard Boat Race

Was won by Yale, June 28, by seventeen lengths. On the same day the triangular Yale-Columbia-Harvard freshman race was won by Yale by two and a half lengths, with Columbia second.

Base Ball Games

During the month resulted as follows:

June 4. Yale-University of Penn., 13-5, at New Haven.

June 16. Yale-Princeton,

June 21. Yale-Harvard,

June 26. Yale-Harvard,

6-5, at Brooklyn.

5-1, at Cambridge. 2-0, at New Haven.

BOOK NOTICES.

Mr. Stanley Weyman's reputation as a writer of a certain kind of novel, which is always eagerly bought up by some classes of readers, was gained chiefly through the The Gentleman of France and Under the Red Robe, two books which have now achieved universal recognition as masterpieces of their kind. The Story of Francis Cludde* had no very great sale when published in 1888, nor has it now the popularity which made the success of the two later books. Yet it is undeniably the best volume which Mr. Weyman has given us both in point of literary style and unceasing interest. But the perusal of two of this kind of books is sufficient for the average man, and Francis Ciudde must therefore remain more or less in the background, content to have his history known only to the few. Mr. Weyman traces his hero's life from his boyhood when that most interesting character, Stephen Gardiner, drawn by the author with remarkable skill, gives the young lad the choice of following his father's footsteps and becoming a spy, or of leaving the country. Cludde very naturally runs away and his subsequent adventures form the plot of the book. Of course, given an innocent man persecuted and followed by a villain, with a woman or two in distress thrown in to give variety, you have the plot of every melodrama and melodramatic novel ever written, but while Mr. Weyman has not been unconventional or original enough to avoid this combination of circumstances, his treatment and development of the plot is refreshingly new, and exciting. Young Cludde meets with the women in the case in London on a foggy day, and finally gets them on board a ship only to have to take them off again. Finally the party leave England safely and arrive in Holland. After a series of adventures they are obliged to leave, and they take a long night ride in the rain, on which occasion Cludde kills a few pursuers in order to add excitement to an otherwise rather monotonous and very damp ride. There is a little trouble about which road they will take, and the husband of one of the women, wishing to do a little killing on his own account, gets the party into trouble. They take refuge in a gate-house and Cludde, who has probably been reading The Tale of Two Cities, says that he really did the killing, and is sentenced to be executed. He knows, however, that Stanley Weyman will get him out of trouble, and so he does. Then the party gets back to England, and Ciudde turns conspirator along with the woman's husband. The conspirators meet in a place which from the author's description must have been very awkward to get to, and of course there is a traitor among them. This person is sentenced to death, and then turns out to be Cludde's father, the spy. The death of the Queen and the ascension of Elizabeth to the throne renders the conspiracy useless and everything turns out happily. The chief definite quality which the book possesses is that when one has once taken it up, it is impossible to lay it down. And this is probably the greatest praise which Mr. Weyman could wish to hear, for it was evidently with this purpose in view that The Story of Francis Cludde was written.

*The Story of Francis Cludde. By Stanley J. Weyman. Pp. 288. New York: The Cassell Publishing Company.

Three of the prettiest and most pathetic little tales which we have come across for some time are comprised in the volume of the "Incognito Library" which takes its title after the first of the stories, The Hon. Stanbury.* This tells of a man of good family who shuns woman's society and who, through association with a rough crowd of men becomes outwardly like them himself. He meets a dancer from one of the London theatres and marries her. All the good in his underlying noble disposition is brought to the surface by this woman, and just as he begins to taste some of the real happiness of life, she dies, and poor Stanbury is left alone. Poor Miss Skeet, the second story in the book, tells of a woman who had lived without friends, without a lover, and whose sole romance in life was "to die in Rome"-alone. The Indigent Gentlewoman—the story of another miserable life—in order to keep herself alive is obliged to keep flowers on the grave of her former lover, who had married another woman, a woman of the world, whose social duties prevent her from caring for her dead husband's grave herself. The stories are inexpressibly sad, and they show an unpleasant side of life perhaps, which is nevertheless true life, and life which it is as well that we should not hide from ourselves. The author's style is dainty and beautiful, and no one who reads these tales can help feeling benefited, although perhaps a trifle depressed.

Mr. Vandam, in The Mystery of the Patrician Club, has produced a detective story of such ingenuity that it is impossible for the reader to solve the mystery until the last pages have been reached. The story is not told in the trashy style peculiar to most volumes of this description, and as far as it can be, the story is original to a remarkable degree. The detective in the tale has something more than the mere desire for fame in his profession to urge him on to victory, and for this reason he is a more interesting person than usual. Even the jaded reader, we think, will be capable of feeling some sympathy in Davenport's attempts to bring the criminal to justice. And the crime is not the ordinary detective story crime, for there is some rhyme and reason in it. Lord Brackelonde is about as cunning a villain as one would care to come across. His and the detective's death at the close of the story are disappointing because one would like to see virtue triumphant, but this ending is better in many ways than having the criminal arrested. The opening of the book is especially clever, and it is difficult to discover the real culprit. No less clever is the final denouement which is treated with much skill. The less important characters in the story, particularly the detective's sister, have more reason for existence than the mere unravelling of the mystery, and throughout, the author has shown power in characterdrawing. The part of the story where Lord Brackelonde escapes, disguised as his own coachman, is by far the most exciting, and when this crisis is reached any one who interrupts the reader had best beware. Besides the

*The Hon. Stanbury, and others. By "Two." Pp. 191. The Incognito Library. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Mystery of the Patrician Club. By Albert D. Vandam. Pp. 343. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

quality of intense interest the book possesses in no little degree real literary merit, and should gain fame even greater than that of the celebrated Leavenworth Case. The volume is bound and printed in a manner superior to Lippincott's usual style.

The Artificial Mother* is a very humorous short story which reminds us very much of Frank R. Stockton. The idea of a distracted father manufacturing a mechanical machine to take care of his numerous children so that he may gain some portion of his wife's society is certainly original. The book is cynical in the extreme, but the cynicism is of a harmless nature, and the development of a rather trivial idea is very clever. The illustrations which accompany the text are of more than usual excellence, but it must have taken some braveness on the publisher's part to issue so short a story, even with illustrations, in book form.

Maximilian and Carlotta is, as the author says, a story of Imperialism. It is a study of Maximilian's attempt, at the instigation of Napoleon III, to found a Mexican empire, of the causes of his temporary success and final defeat and execution. Mr. Taylor enters into a close analysis of the diplomatic relations of both the Imperial and Liberal factions with the various Powers, an intricate thread to follow, but here drawn out most clearly and thoroughly. The book is not one for mere reference or study by students of history, but is of thorough interest to the general reader. There is a sustained romantic attraction in the story of the Austrian archduke who undertook to aid the cause of Mexican independence and in the story of the beautiful wife who followed him to his death-notwithstanding her conviction that his mission was doomed to fail. The writer's style is even and interesting; he has mastered the art of presenting a succession of historical facts without monotony and at times the narrative strikes into a rapidity and fullness of force that is dramatic in the extreme.

The book is well bound, printed in excellent type upon paper of a quality that it would be a blessing to meet with oftener.

James Frederick McCurdy, the well known Orientalist, has published the first volume of a work on which he has spent nearly a lifetime of patient research. History, Prophecy and the Monuments‡ is the result of a deep and earnest study of the Old Testament, and will prove of unusual interest and assistance to those who are not satisfied with the current interpretation of that book. The history and literature of Israel are topics upon which the large amount of study that has been spent has not prevented from being

*The Artificial Mother: A Marital Fantasy. By G. H. P., with illustrations by A. W. Van Deusen. Pp. 31. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Maximilian and Carlotta. By John M. Taylor. Pp. 209. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

History, Prophecy and the Monuments. Vol. I. By James Frederick McCurdy. Pp. 425. New York: Macmillan and Company.

clouded with a considerable amount of vagueness and incertitude. The Hebrew nation has been gravely misunderstood in all its aspects. The present work is one which combines all the labor and ingenuity of the past historians of this race and period, and also adds much which will be new to even the special student. At the present time, in the light of the higher criticism which has been applied to Bible stories and traditions, Professor McCurdy's book comes to us with a peculiar significance. The first volume is of such rare interest and instruction that we shall look for the succeeding volumes with unusual expectation.

Only once in twenty years can the question of woman's suffrage arouse the amount of discussion which has been going on concerning the subject during the past summer. And coming as it does at a time when all the women in the land and many of the men have been taking up this question, Mary Putnam-Jacobi's little volume on Common Sense Applied to Woman's Suffrage will be found to be most opportune. The volume does not pretend to be an exhaustive treatise on the subject, nor is it a digest of the immense amount of literature which the question has created. It is rather, as its title suggests, common sense by a sensible woman, who has not been carried away by the idea that women alone should rule the world, as have many of her sex. The work states many of the reasons by which the demand to allow women to vote can be justified, but the arguments on the other side are also carefully considered. Of course the book refers more especially to the issues which the New York State Convention of the year 1894 had presented to it. The development of the author's ideas on the evolution of woman's position up to the chapter where she discusses the situation as it is at present is most clever. The volume is one of that admirable series called Questions of the Day.

Frank Sargent Hoffman is Professor of Philosophy in Union College. Therefore the excellent volume which he has just issued on The Sphere of the State, is addressed primarily to those students in our universities interested in the social problems, the solution of which will soon devolve upon them. The present treatise is not so much of a political as an ethical character. The various problems by which the present age is confronted are dealt with primarily in their relation to moral action. Though written mainly for the inexperienced undergraduate student, it is a work which we could nevertheless recommend to the skilled political jobber. The book has a pleasant personal tinge which will be appreciated, and yield a large amount of pleasure outside of the walls of Union College, where it first did service in a series of lectures in the spring of 1893. It is something which we would earnestly recommend to the careful consideration of all Yale men who are devoting their time to the study of social problems.

*Common Sense Applied to Woman Suffrage. By Mary Putnam-Jacobi, M.D. Pp. 236. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Sphere of the State, or the People as a Body-Politic; with Special Consideration of Certain Present Problems. By Frank Sargent Hoffman, A.M. Pp. 275. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

« ForrigeFortsæt »