HISTORIC
BUILDINGS

Described by Great Writers and Travellers; profusely illustrated

Edited by Esther Singleton

Author of "A Guide to the Opera," "Great Pictures," etc.

The buildings which are closely associated with the great events in the world's history will never cease to be of interest. Their artistic reproductions accompanied by graphic descriptions must suffice for the great majority of readers, while those who have had the opportunity of personal inspection will enjoy all the more the memories thus evoked.

8vo NET, $1.60

MEMOIRS OF AN
AMERICAN LADY

With sketches of manners and scenes in America as they
existed previous to the Revolution

By Mrs. Anne Grant
Author of "Letters from the Mountains," etc.

With a memoir of Mrs. Grant and numerous notes
by James Grant Wilson

This is a popular reprint of the de luxe edition published two years ago. This admirable memoir of Mrs. Schuyler first appeared in London in 1808.

8vo. NET, $3.50

Little Pilgrimages Among the Men and Women Who

Have Written Famous Books.
No. 8. Thomas Dixon, Jr.

War - Song of Harald the Red.
Fact and Fancy..
The Editor's Club..

.. H. C.

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Benjamin Disraeli...

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BOOKS OF GENERAL INTEREST

Mezzotints

The Louisiana Purchase.

Sunny Memories of Three Pastorates.

My Struggle for Light..

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"THE Leopard's Spots," by Thomas Dixon, Jr., which Doubleday, Page & Co. published in March, 1902, is by all odds the most remarkable of the many recent successful first novels. Until lately a successful first novel was a rarity; now it is almost a commonplace. "The Helmet of Navarre," "When Knighthood Was in Flower," "Eben Holden," "Graustark," "The Spenders," "The Spoilsmen "all these are first novels, and successes. "The Leopard's Spots," though not so popular as some of them, is the most remarkable of all. Max Nordau says that it has deliberately undone the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe. At least, it may fairly be regarded as the South's long-deferred answer to "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In the twelvemonth following its publication one hundred thousand copies were sold.

In "The Leopard's Spots" is met again the same infamous Legree whom Mrs. Stowe depicted; but now, instead of holding slaves and beating some to death, he is a "truly loyal" Southern, inciting the negroes to demand their full share of the privileges of citizenship, and taking first pick of the spoils. George Harris, the only educated negro in the tale, is represented to be the son of Eliza Harris, who escaped from a slave-pen, and, with her child in her arms, fled across the icechoked Ohio with hounds baying in her trail.

Strictly speaking, "The Leopard's Spots" is not so much an answer as a sequel to "Uncle Tom's Cabin." By portraying its abuses, Mrs. Stowe dealt slavery a blow from which it never recovered. That slavery cloaked fearful abuses no Southerner - not even Mr. Dixon himself - denies, or could honestly deny. But "Uncle Tom's Cabin" did not look forward to the consequences of the emancipation of the negro; and that these consequences are troublesome, and often fearful, no Northerner - not even one of Garrison's could honestly deny. The relation between "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Leopard's Spots," 50 therefore, is simply local. Mrs. Stowe was not responsible for the scalawags who took possession of the South after the war; nor was Mr. Dixon responsible for the abuses inflicted upon helpless and innocent negroes, both male and female, before the war.

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But, after all has been said, the negro problem still remains; and this is the problem which the Virginia. 51 novelist begs his readers to consider. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" Can the thoughtful white man ever admit the negro to full social and political equality? Possibly some Northerners would vote for a negro of Dr. Booker T. Washington's stamp for President of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has had Doctor Washington at dinner in the White House. But would the most sympathetic Northern negromaniac, a refined, aristocratic white man, encourage and permit a negro to marry into his family? The substance of Mr. Dixon's argument, which re59 pudiates the idea that absolute equality between Caucasian and Ethiopian exists in the United States, lies. in the chapter entitled "Equality with a Reservation." The Honorable Everett Lowell, a Boston statesman, has made a powerful speech at the Cooper Union, New

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* Copyright, 1903, by L. C. Page and Company (Inc.).

Lowell admits their political equality. "Politics is but a secondary phenomena of society. You said absolute equality," protests Harris.

"The question you broach," replies Lowell, “is a question of taste, and the deeper social instincts of racial purity and self-preservation. I care not what your culture, or your genius, or your position, I do not desire, and will not permit, a mixture of negro blood in my family. The idea is nauseating, and to my daughter it would be repulsive beyond the power of words to express it!"

"And yet," pleads Harris, "you invited me to your home, introduced me to your daughter, seated me at your table, and used me in your appeal to your constituents, and now when I dare ask the privilege of seeking her hand in honorable marriage, you, the scholar, patriot, statesman, and philosopher of equality and democracy, slam the door in my face and tell me that I am a negro! Is this fair or manly?"

"I fail to see its unfairness," is Lowell's answer; and finally Harris is ordered from the house.

The scene presents the negro problem stripped of all its shams and subterfuges. It is a violent picture. The effect might have been produced more quietly and more truthfully. The plain truth is that no negro in Harris's position would presume to seek the hand of a white lady. He would be content with political and athletic equality. A young negro orator said at Harvard last June that the negro problem would find its solution in religion; yet only a few years ago, in Boston, the cradle of abolition, a worthy negro bishop was denied bed and board at all the leading hotels, and even Booker T. Washington himself, when he visits Boston to appeal to his influential admirers there, is obliged to put up at a hotel in one of the cheapest parts of the city.

Naturally "The Leopard's Spots" aroused much hostile criticism, based on the allegation that it appealed to prejudice and that it raked up dead issues. The author replied in a letter from which we quote these few paragraphs:

"I have not sought to arouse race hatred or prejudice. For the negro I have the friendliest feelings and the profoundest pity. What I have attempted to show is that this nation is now beginning to face an apparently insoluble problem. Frederic Harrison declares

"I claim the book is an authentic human document, and I know it is the most important moral deed of my life. There is not a bitter or malignant sentence in it. It may shock the prejudices of those who have idealized or worshipped the negro as canonized in Uncle Tom.' Is it not time they heard the whole truth? They have heard only one side for forty years. . .

"The only question for a critic to determine when. discussing my moral right to publish such a book is this: Is the record of life given important and authentic? If eighteen millions of Southern people, who at present rule, believe what my book expresses, is it not well to know it? I assert that they do believe it, and the number of Southern white people to-day who disagree with 'The Leopard's Spots' could all be housed on a half-acre lot. I challenge any man to deny this. If it is true, is it not of tremendous importance that the whole nation shall know it?"

Like the strength of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the strength of "The Leopard's Spots" is elemental. The Southern novel is curiously crude. The simplest rules of grammar are repeatedly broken and the characters talk stiltedly and again absurdly. Miss Lowell, the Bostonian, is made to say, "If Bob don't write me faithfully I'll make him come here and live in Boston." A young woman of her environment could not say "If Bob don't," any more than her proud and prudent father could ever leave her alone to entertain à negro or be entertained by him. The Republicans of Massachusetts have courted the negro's vote, but they have never accustomed themselves to inviting the negro to their houses.

The love-story of the hero, Charles Gaston, and Miss Sallie Worth is the least extravagant and the most pleasing feature of the novel. Indeed, that story more than anything else in the book contains a promise of good things to come. The scene of Gaston's proposal to Miss Sallie is poetically described, and the manly directness of the young gentleman and the coy yet finely modest demeanor of the young lady are delineated with captivating skill.

The character of Charles Gaston, whose boyhood is saddened by the deplorable days of the Reconstruction period, and under whose leadership the white men rule supreme, is drawn from the present Governor of North Carolina.

Comparatively speaking, the author of "The Leopard's Spots" is still a young man. He was born in Shelby, North Carolina, January 11, 1864. His father was a well-known Baptist minister. At the age of nineteen Thomas was graduated from Wake Forest College, one of the minor schools of his native State, and, by the way, the alma mater of the hero of the novel. Then Mr. Dixon entered Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, as a special student in history and politics. This advantage was gained by means of a scholarship. The following year, 1884, he took up the study of law at the Greensboro (North Carolina) Law School, from which he was graduated with honors in 1886. That same year he was admitted to the bar of all the courts in the State, including the United States district courts, and also to the bar of the United States Supreme Court at Washington. However, with characteristic restlessness, he resigned these privileges, in October, 1886, to enter the ministry. Seven months before he had been married to Miss Harriett Bussey, of Montgomery, Alabama.

It would be a rather difficult task to note in an

orderly fashion all the steps that Mr. Dixon took from his graduation at Wake Forest College to his entrance into the ministry. For one thing, he was a member of the North Carolina Legislature from 1884 to 1886; but other pursuits seem to have lessened legislative attractions for him. At the same time, in 1884, he must have been a curious, if not a powerful, legislator, for he was then only twenty years old, and consequently not a voter. A young man to have been affected by the buzzing of the political bee!

In 1887, after his ordination, he was elected pastor of a Baptist church in Raleigh, North Carolina. During the following year he occupied a Baptist pulpit in Boston, and the next year he accepted a call to the People's Temple (Baptist) in New York. There his restlessness waned, for there he remained until 1899. Before the close of his ministry he enjoyed the reputation of attracting larger congregations than any other Protestant preacher in the country. At any rate, his ministration was remarkably popular; and when he pleased he could preach a highly sensational sermon. Many of his pulpit utterances are to be found in the books which he compiled prior to his leaving New York "Living Problems in Religion and Social Science" (1891), "What Is Religion?" (1892), “Sermons on Ingersoll" (1894), and the "Failure of Protestantism in New York (1897). The last book may be said to have foretold his departure from the ministry. As pastor of the People's Church he rose to more than local prominence by reason of his freedom and originality of thought, his vigor of expression, and his independence of action. He proved on many occasions that he was not a man to be fettered by traditions or by customs; but, at the same time, he stood afar from radicalism. His faith was as strong at the end of his ministry as at the start, and his independence concerned the lesser restraints. He did not hesitate, for instance, to go hunting with a gun which is not exactly a clerical occupation.

It was as a preacher, by the way, that Mr. Dixon first became identified with fiction. Camden, the heroic preacher who figures in one of Lilian Bell's stories, was drawn from the same man who afterward drew the heroic figure of Charles Gaston in "The Leopard's Spots."

Nearly every educated imaginative boy at some time feels disposed to write books. Our North Carolina boy was no exception to this rule: and though law, and afterward religion, drew him away from literature, he has returned to it as to a first love. After leaving the People's Temple he spent much of his time lecturing; and indeed, he is one of the most popular lecturers in America. But he kept literature in mind, and simply awaited his theme - his opportunity.

"The Leopard's Spots" simmered in his mind for more than a year. Almost every day something went into the mental pot - some idea, some fact found in an obscure quarter, some new answer to an old argument. The actual writing of the novel occupied about sixty days. Part of the writing was done in a deserted cabin on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, across from "Elmington," the author's estate; and part was done in the spare hours of a lecture tour.

This tour was full of distraction. There is a story which tells how a peremptory dinner call at a hotel brought him moodily down-stairs. As he was entering the dining-room, a black hall-boy pulled his sleeve and said, "'Scuse me, suh: I reck'n you's forgot sump'n." "Have I?" said Mr. Dixon, puzzled. "What is it?" "You's sutunly forgot all 'bout dat collah an' necktie."

Sure enough, in his excitement he had overlooked his neckwear, and he returned to his room thankful that his omission was not worse. He does not mind telling a story on himself.

"Elmington Manor," the author's new house in Dixondale, Virginia, is a truly magnificent estate. The five hundred acres comprise all the attractions of the country and the seashore. Quail, woodcock, and wild turkey abound; there are twenty-five acres of oyster beds; there is a beach a mile and a half long; there are three hundred large shade-trees on the lawn; the white house, with its imposing portico, contains thirtyfive rooms, and the drive from the porch to the front gate is two miles long. The log cabin in which the author works was planned by him and built by negroes under his supervision. Across the creek from "Elmington" and the five hundred acres roundabout were once among the possessions of the Indian princess Pocahontas.

Mr. Dixon's latest novel, "The One Woman," is a New York story dealing with divorce and socialism. It is related that when his publishers read the manuscript they notified him to make his own terms. The shock which the reception of that notice must have produced is something which most authors still merely dream of experiencing. E. F. HARKINS.

Reviews

THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE. By Albert J. Beveridge. (New York: Harper & Brothers. $2.50 net.) "THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE," by Albert J. Beveridge, is published at just the psychological moment when the gaze of the world is fixed on the Far East, and every one is eager to add to his knowledge of the conditions which have produced the present critical situation. This is not the work of an ordinary, kodak-laden globetrotter, but of an energetic, conscientious legislator, who, in order that he might be of greater service in the councils of his own country, visited the scenes of the coming storm, and studied the conditions there with a view of ascertaining how peace or war would affect the interest of the United States. This patriotic effort merits the strongest approval, even though we may not be prepared to accept, in every particular, his conclusions. Senator Beveridge has brought to his task a mass of first-hand information, which he acquired through the courtesy of the Russian governOwing to his position as a member of the treaty-making branch of the American government, the Russian authorities gladly seized the opportunity to secure a friendly advocate there, and afforded the writer every opportunity to study the institutions of the country, not even concealing from him the evidences of Russia's expansion throughout Manchuria, or that Russia was there to stay.

ment.

As a result of this frank friendliness on the part of the Russians, we are given, in Senator Beveridge's book, a sympathetic view, not only of the social, political and economic system of the empire, but also a benevolent view of Russian expansion, perhaps too sympathetic to admit of the work being classed as history. By this it is not meant that his facts should not be accepted, for they should, every one of them. It is simply a caution that the writer, because he was a distinguished citizen of a country with which Russia ever wants to be on good terms, saw the fairest side of things. In the limited space of this review no effort is made to follow Mr. Beveridge's work in

detail. Assuming that readers just now are are more interested in the broad subject of the situation in the Far East, we confine our attention to that.

The author's verdict as to Russia's position in Manchuria is that, no matter what treaties may say, no matter what may be the statements of diplomacy regarding the territory, the fact remains that its fate lies in the hands of Russia. It may continue nominally a province of China, but, if it does, it will do so by Russia's grace and not by Russia's necessity. If its ports remain open to the trade of the world, it will not be because of a limitation of Russia's power, but as a matter of Russia's policy. For Russia, for all practical purposes, holds every foot of Manchuria in her firm, masterful, intelligent grasp. Russian law, in the sense that all shall have justice regularly administered; Russian order, in the sense that murder and outrage by robber bands and savage clans shall cease; Russian system, in the sense that regularity and method shall succeed continuous social, political, and commercial disturbance Russian law, order, and system as thus understood are there forever.

The author evidently believes with many keen observers of affairs in the Far East that, if Japan ever meant to go to war with Russia for Manchuria or Korea, she should have struck years ago. Had England had the courage at the end of the Chinese-Japanese War to have made a treaty along the lines of the treaty she now has with Japan, and backed it up with her warships, Russia would not have been able to use France and Germany as her catspaws, and rob Japan of Port Arthur, Manchuria, and other fruits of victory. Russia then would not have overrun that province and built her railroad to the open sea, not in this generation at least.

Mr. Beveridge is too tender of the susceptibilities of his Russian friends properly to characterize this despicable action of Russia, Germany, and France in marching up to Japan, as she paused, exhausted at the end of war with China, and filching from her what she had won by her blood and treasure, in order that Russia might seize it later on without the loss of a drop of blood or the expenditure of a cent of money, other than that put into permanent improvements, railroads, cities, mining plants, etc.

But for Japan, with her splendid powers of organization, supreme at Pekin, might not Asia, and even Europe, have faced the " Yellow Peril" as a reality and not as a mere bugaboo? F. W. FORD.

THE LAWS OF IMITATION. By Gabriel Tarde. Translated by Elsie Clews Parsons. (Henry Holt & Company. $3.00 net.)

FOR the last ten years an English translation of M. Tarde's highly original and brilliant work on Imitation has been keenly desired. Professional students of sociology acquainted with French have known and prized the volume as one of the few books on the science of society really worth reading and re-reading. It is a great satisfaction, therefore, to welcome this excellent translation, which will justify to English readers the praises of M. Tarde's subtlety and insight, which the professors of sociology have long been repeating.

M. Tarde, searching for the fundamental fact in the nature of man which makes him a social animal, finds this in imitation. To this term, as well as to invention, its opposite, he gives a wide meaning, extending it to include all repetition in the psychical field, whether conscious or not. The whole universe is made up of

repetitions, and we could not know it scientifically if this were not so. Repetition in the physical world is undulation or vibration; in the organic it is heredity; in the psychical world it is imitation. Society is imitation. But what is imitation itself, more precisely? M. Tarde responds in his characteristic epigrammatic and paradoxical manner: "Society is imitation, and imitation is hypnotism." (Mrs. Parsons should have used this last word instead of "somnambulism." M. Tarde's own word, to be sure, but quite outgrown: hynotism much better conveys his actual meaning.) That is to say, the social person par excellence is the person who imitates the persons with whom he comes into contact, and does as they do; he is influenced by them in a minor degree as the hypnotized subject is impressed by the hypnotizer. An ideal society, qua society, would be one in which waves of emotion and thought would be propagated instantaneously from one person to another through a whole city.

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This one paragraph may serve here as a specimen brick from M. Tarde's construction of society, give the whole plan of the house is beyond the limits of our space. Without accepting every detail of the architect's plans as unassailable, we must say that M. Tarde's work is the most original, stimulating, and penetrating volume on the essential nature of social phenomena now extant. By the side of it, books on the organic nature of society are shallow and trite. M. Tarde's greatness as a thinker can be estimated by any one who will read Herbert Spencer's futile one hundred and fifty pages, in his "Principles of Sociology," in which he rides the overworked organism theory to its death, and will then turn to these pages of M. Tarde, and read for half an hour the thoughts of a philosophic genius who has really "specialized" in sociology. No student of the subject can now be excused for not reckoning with Gabriel Tarde. N. P. GILMAN.

PROBLEMS AND PERSONS. By Wilfrid Ward. (New York: Longmans, Green & Company.)

MR. WILFRID PHILIP WARD, now in his forty-eighth year, is an English Roman Catholic, whose literary labors have been largely related to the Oxford Movement and the leading actors therein. He is the second son of William George Ward, of whose life, as connected with the Oxford Movement, he published an interesting narrative in 1889. A personal circumstance of note is the fact that his wife is a daughter of the late James Robert Hope-Scott of Abbotsford. Mr. Ward has written a number of volumes on Roman Catholic aspects of English Christianity, and many essays in the English reviews.

Eleven of Mr. Ward's thoughtful and interesting essays are brought together in the present volume. Superficially of a miscellaneous character, they are unified by a certain community of purpose, and, though disconnected in title, present a somewhat logical procession, passing from the general and abstract to the concrete and particular. The contributing streams arise in the mountains of ecclesiastical discussion, and unite in a biographical plain. The standpoint throughout, whether in the philosophical treatment of the earlier themes, or the more strictly personal treatment of the later themes, is that of a well-informed, devout, confident, aggressive English Roman Catholic.

The first four essays, which are ecclesiastical in subject matter, are philosophical in tone. We have found. most readable the one on "The Rigidity of Rome." The rigidity is conceded by Mr. Ward, but claimed. to be a temporary attitude incident to a state of con