VI The Woman’s Rights Woman

I

The latter half of our century is comparatively poor in remarkable women. Nowadays, when women are more exacting than they used to be, they are of less importance than of old. We have rows of women artists, women scientists, and authoresses; the countries of Europe are overrun with them, but they are all mediocrities; and in the upper classes, although there are plenty of eccentric ladies, they are abnormities, not individuals. The secret of a woman’s power has always lain in what she is, rather than in what she does, and that is where the women of to-day appear to be strangely lacking. They do all kinds of things, they study and write books without number, they collect money for various objects, they pass examinations and take degrees, they hold meetings and give lectures, they start societies, and there never was a time when women lived a more public life than at present. Yet, with all that, they are of less public importance than they used to be. Where are the women whose drawing-rooms were filled with the greatest thinkers and most distinguished men of their day? They do not exist. Where are the women with delicate tact, who took part in the affairs of the nation? They are a myth. Where are the women whose influence was acknowledged to be greater than the counsel of ministers? Where are the women whose love is immortalized in the works of the greatest poets? Where are the women whose passionate devotion was life and joy to man, bearing him on wings of gladness towards the unknown, and leading him back to the beautiful life on earth? They have been, but where are they now? The more that woman seeks to exert her influence by main force, the less her influence as an individual; the more she imbues this century with her spirit, the fewer her conquests as woman. Her influence on the literature of the eighties has shown itself in an intense, ingrained hatred. It is she who has inspired man to write his hymn of hatred to woman,—Tolstoi in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” Strindberg in a whole collection of dramas, Huysman in “En Ménage,” while many a lesser star is sceptical of love; and in the writings of the younger authors, where this scepticism is not so apparent, we find that they understand nothing at all about women. It is a peculiar sign of the times that, in spite of the many restrictions of former days, men and women never have stood wider apart than at present, and have never understood one another more badly than now. The honest, unselfish sympathy, the true, I should like to say organical union, which is still to be observed in the married life of old people, seems to have vanished. Each goes his or her own way; there may be a nervous search for each other and a short finding, but it is soon followed by a speedy losing. Is it the men who are to blame? The men of former days were doubtless very different, but in their relations to women they were scarcely more sociable than at present.

Or is it the women who are at fault? For some time past I have watched life in its many phases, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the woman who either develops the man’s character or ruins it. His mother, and the woman to whom he unites himself, leave an everlasting mark upon the impressionable side of his nature.

In most cases the final question is not, What is the man like? but, What kind of a woman is she? And I think that the answer is as follows: A woman’s actions are more reasonable than they used to be, and her love is also more reasonable. The consequence is a lessening of the passion that is hers to give, which again results in a corresponding coolness on the part of the man. The modern system of educating girls by teaching them numerous languages, besides many other branches of knowledge, encourages a superficial development of the understanding, and renders women more exacting, without making them more attractive; and while the average level of intelligence among women is raised, and the self-conceit of the many largely increased, the few who are original characters will in all probability disappear beneath the pressure of their own sex, and in consequence of the apathy which governs the mutual relations of both sexes.

The age in which we live has produced another class of women in their stead, who, since they represent the strongest majority, must be reckoned as the type. It is natural that they should have neither the influence nor the fascination of the older generation, and they are not as happy. They are neither happy themselves, nor do they make others happy; the reason is that they are less womanly than the others were. From their midst the modern authoresses have gone forth, women who in days to come will be named in connection with the progress of culture; and I think that Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, will long be remembered as the most characteristic representative of the type.

II

She was the supporter of a movement that originated with her, and ceased when she died. She was known in countries far beyond her native Sweden; her books were read and discussed all over Germany, and her stories were published in the Deutsche Rundschau. She had a clearer brain than most women writers; she could look reality in the face without being afraid, and indeed she was not one who was easily frightened. She was very independent, and understood the literary side of her calling as well as its practical side, and her struggles were by no means confined to her writings. She threw aside the old method of seeking to gain her ends by means of womanly charm; she wanted to convince as a woman of intellect. She condemned the old method which used to be considered the special right of women, and fought for the new right, i.e., recognition as a human being. All her arguments were clear and temperate; she was not emotional. The minds from which she fashioned her own were Spencer and Stuart Mill. Nature had endowed her with a proud, straightforward character, and she was entirely free from that affected sentimentality which renders the writings of most women unendurable.

In the course of ten years she became celebrated throughout Europe, and she died suddenly about six months after the birth of her first child. Sonia Kovalevsky, the other and greater European celebrity, who was Professor of Mathematics, and her most intimate friend, also died suddenly, as did several others,—Victoria Benediktson (Ernst Ahlgren), her fellow-countrywoman, and for many years her rival; Adda Ravnkilde, a young Danish writer, who wrote several books under her influence; and a young Finnish authoress named Thedenius. The last three died by their own hands; Sonia Kovalevsky and Fru Edgren-Leffler died after a short illness.

Fru Leffler was the eldest,—she lived to be forty-three; the others died younger,—the last two very much younger. But they all made the same attempt, and they all failed. They wanted to stand alone, they demanded their independence, they tried to carry into practice their views with regard to man.

George Sand made the same attempt, and she succeeded. But then her independence took a very different form from theirs. She followed the traditions of her family, and set no barriers to love; she drank of the great well of life until she had well-nigh exhausted it. She was quite a child of the old régime in her manner of life. The efforts made by these other women, at the close of the nineteenth century, took the form of wishing to dispense with man altogether. It is this feature of Teutonic chastity, bounding on asceticism, that was the tragic moment in the lives of all these short-lived women.

It is a strange piece of contemporary history of which I am about to write. It is this that is the cause of the despondent mood peculiar to the last decade of our century; it is this that acts as a weight upon our social life, that makes our leisure wearisome, our joys cold. It is this decay in woman’s affection that is the greatest evil of the age.

One of the tendencies of the time is the craving for equality, which seeks to develop woman’s judgment by increasing her scientific knowledge. It might have answered from the woman’s point of view, so far, at least, as the man was concerned, for it does not much matter to a woman whom she loves, as long as she loves some one. But women have become so sensible nowadays that they refuse to love without a decisive guarantee, and this calculating spirit has already become to them a second nature to so great an extent that they can no longer love, without first taking all kinds of precautionary measures to insure their future peace and comfortable maintenance, to say nothing of the unqualified regard which they expect from their husbands.

All things are possible from a state of mind such as we have described, except love, and love cannot flourish upon it. If there is a thing for which woman is especially created,—that is, unless she happens to be different from other women,—it is love. A woman’s life begins and ends in man. It is he who makes a woman of her. It is he who creates in her a new kind of self-respect by making her a mother; it is he who gives her the children whom she loves, and to him she owes their affection. The more highly a woman’s mind and body are developed, the less is she able to dispense with man, who is the source of her great happiness or great sorrow, but who, in either case, is the only meaning of her life. For without him she is nothing.

The woman of to-day is quite willing to enjoy the happiness which man brings, but when the reverse is the case, she refuses to submit. She thinks that, with a little precaution, she can bring the whole of life within the compass of a mathematical calculation. But before she has finished her sum, and proved it to see if it is correct, happiness and sorrow have flown past her, leaving her desolate and forsaken,—hardened for want of love, miserable in spite of a cleverly calculated marriage, and imbittered in the midst of joyless ease and sorrow unaccounted for.

Such was the fate of these five short-lived authoresses, although they might not have described it as I have done. Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler was chief among the Scandinavian women’s rights women who have made for themselves a name in literature. Her opinions were scattered abroad among thousands of women in Germany and in the North, and as she died without being able to dig up the seed which she had sown, she will always be considered as a type of the fin de siècle woman, and will remain one of its historical characters.

I write this sketch in the belief that it will not be very unlike the one she would have written of herself, had she lived long enough to do so.

III

Anne Charlotte Leffler was born at Stockholm, and, like all her townsfolk, she was tall, strong, and somewhat angular. She was by nature cold and critical, and in this respect she did not differ from the women of North Sweden. The daughter of a college rector, she had received a thoroughly good education, and was probably far better educated than the majority of women, as she grew up in the companionship of two brothers, who were afterwards professors.

When she was nineteen years of age, she published her first work, a little play, in two acts, called “The Actress.” The piece describes the struggle between love and talent, and the scene is laid in the rather narrow sphere of a small country town. The characters are decidedly weak, but not more so than one would naturally expect from the pen of an inexperienced girl of the upper class. There was nothing to show that it was the work of a beginner. Her faculty for observation is extraordinarily keen, her descriptions of character are terse, striking, and appropriate, and the construction of the piece is clever. It shows a thoughtful mind, and there is none of the clumsy handling noticeable in young writers; the conflict is carefully thought out, and described with mathematical clearness. But however ornate an author’s style, however remarkable her intellect, these qualities do not form the most important part of her talent as a woman and an authoress. In considering the first book of a writer who afterwards became celebrated throughout Europe, the question of primary importance is this: How much character is revealed in this book?

Or, to put the question with greater precision, since it concerns a woman: How much character is there that the author was not able to suppress?

The sky seems colored with the deep glow of dawn; it is the great expectancy of love. Here we have the writing of a young girl who knows nothing about love except the one thing,—that it is a woman’s whole existence. She has never experienced it, but her active mind has already grasped some of its difficulties; and one great difficulty, which must not be overlooked, is the bourgeois desire to maintain a sure footing. An actress is going to marry into a respectable middle-class family. Nobody in this section of society can think of love otherwise than clad in a white apron and armed with a matronly bunch of keys. Love here means the commonplace. The actress is accustomed to a worse but wider sphere; love for her means to become a great actress, to attain perfection in her art, but to her intended it means that she should love him and keep house.

The problem does not often present itself like this in real life, and if it did the result would in all probability be very different; in the imagination of a well-bred girl of eighteen, like Anne Charlotte Leffler, it was the only conclusion possible. And as he will not consent to her wishes, and she refuses to give way to his; as he has no desire to marry an actress, and she no intention of becoming a housewife, they separate with mutual promises of eternal platonic love.

The end is comic, but it is meant to be taken seriously. No matter how it begins, the ordinary woman’s book always ends with platonic love; and it is very characteristic of Anne Charlotte Leffler that her first play should have a platonic and not a tragic ending.

The tragic element, which generally assumes supernatural proportions in the imagination of the young, did not appeal to her; her life was placed in comfortable, bourgeois surroundings, and she was perfectly contented with it.

We find the same want of imagination in all the Swedish authoresses, from Fru Lenngren, Frederica Bremer, and Fru Flygare-Carlén onwards.

A few years later Anne Charlotte Leffler wrote a three-act play, called “The Elf,” of which the two first acts afford the best possible key to her own psychology. It was acted for the first time in 1881, but it was probably written soon after her marriage, in 1872, with Edgren, who was at that time in the service of the government.

IV

Fru Edgren was one of those proud, straightforward women who would never dream of allowing any one to commiserate them. She made no attempt to suit her actions to please the world; her sole ambition was to show herself as she really was. When she wished to do a thing, she did it as quickly as possible, and without any one’s help. She wrote under the influence of her personal impressions, her personal judgment, and her personal opinions; whatever she might attain to in the future, she was determined to have no one but herself to thank for it. But she was a woman. Though usually possessed of a clear judgment, she did not sufficiently realize what it means for a woman to enter upon a literary career by herself. She succeeded in her literary career; but in doing so she sacrificed the best part of her life, and was obliged to suppress her best and truest aspirations, thereby destroying a large amount of real artistic talent.

There are few things that afford me more genuine pleasure than the books of modern authors. I enjoy them less on account of what they tell me than for that which they have been unable to conceal. When they write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s pulse. In the same way as a fine musical ear can distinguish a single false note in an orchestra, a fine psychological instinct can discern the true from the false, and can tell where the author describes his own feelings and where he is only pretending—can discern his true character from among the multitude of conscious and unconscious masks, and can say: This is good metal, and that a worthless composition, wherewith he makes a dupe of himself and of others.

The woman who attempts to write without a man to shield her, to throw a protecting arm around her, is an unfortunate, incongruous being. That which sets her soul aglow—which calls loudly within her—she dare not say. When a man wishes to be a great writer, he defies conventionalism and compels it to become subservient to him; but for a lonely woman, conventionalism is her sole support, not only outwardly, but inwardly also. It forms a part of her womanly modesty; it is the guide of her life, from which naught but love can free her; that is why the more talented a woman is, the more absolutely love must be her pilot.

Fru Edgren’s best play and her two most interesting stories are “The Elf,” “Aurora Bunge,” and “Love and Womanhood.” None of her other works can be said to equal these in depth of feeling, and none strike a more melancholy note. There is an emotional, nervous life in them which presents an attractive contrast to the cold irony of her other works. She has put her whole being into these writings, with something of her womanly power to charm; while in the others we meet with the clear insight, the critical faculty, and the rare sarcasm to which they owe their reputation.

Yet in these three works we notice how very much she is hedged in on all sides by conventionalism. “The Elf,” “Love and Womanhood,” and “Aurora Bunge” make us think of a large and beautiful bird that cannot fly because its long, swift wings have been broken by a fall from the nest.

The “elf” is the wife of the respected mayor of a small country town. Her father was a Swedish artist, whose whole life was spent in travelling, because every time that he came home he was driven away by the narrow social life of Sweden. When he is lying on his deathbed, he leaves his penniless child to the care of his younger friend, the Mayor, who knows no better way of providing for her than by making her his wife. He is universally considered the best son, the best partner in business, and the best man—in the town. The elf wanders about the woods, and becomes the subject of much gossip, likewise of envy, among the smart ladies of the town.

One evening when they are giving a party, and she forgets to play the part of hostess, their neighbor, a Baron, arrives with his sister. Both, no longer young, free from illusions, liberal in thought and speech, seem to carry with them a breath from a bigger world; their mere presence serves to make the elf thoughtlessly happy, and from henceforward she sits daily to the Baron for a picture representing Undine when the knight carries her through the wood, and her soul awakes within her. The elf’s soul—i.e., love—is also awakened. She feels herself drawn towards this man, who has sufficient fire to awaken her womanhood with a kiss. She does not wish, she does not think, but she would not like to be separated from him; he lives in an atmosphere that suits her, and in which she thrives. She is still a child; but the child would like to wake. It is true that her conscience reproaches her with regard to the Mayor, but here the circumstances are related as though she were not quite married,—that is a mistake which nearly all Teutonic authoresses make.

The Baron tells her the story of Undine. The knight finds her at the moment when the brook stretches forth his long white arm to draw her back, but he does not let her go; he takes her in his arms and carries her away, and she looks up at him with a half anxious expression—there is something new in this expression. She is no longer Undine. She loves. She has a soul.

In this drama, Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, the future leader of the woman’s rights movement, makes the confession that a woman’s soul is—love. She is the only Swedish woman writer who would have owned as much.

The Baron is a decadent. Fru Edgren took this type from real life long before the decadence made its appearance in literature. He had enjoyed all sensations with delight and inner emotion, until the woman in the elf opens her eyes in the first moment of half consciousness, and when that happens she becomes indifferent to him. His passion cools. It is true that his actions still tend in the same direction, but he is able to gaze at his thoughts critically. He is not the knight who lifts Undine out of the cold water. He leaves her lying in the brook.

Among the experiences by means of which “independent” women, with a “vocation,” awake to womanhood, this is probably the most common. It is very difficult to define their feelings when they realize a change in the man who first aroused their affections; but I think that I am not far wrong in saying that it is something akin to loathing. The more sensitive the woman, and the more innocent she is, the longer the loathing will last. However cold her outward behavior may appear, the feeling is still there.

There is nothing that a woman resents more keenly than when a man plays with her affections, and neglects her afterwards. The more inexperienced the woman, the more unmanly this behavior seems. If she is a true woman, her disappointment will be all the greater; she will feel it not only with regard to this single individual, but it will cast a shadow over all men.

The last act reveals the author’s perplexity. From an æsthetic point of view the ending is cold, and to a certain extent indifferently executed; but judged from a psychological point of view, it is thoroughly Swedish. Considered as the writing of a young lady in the year 1880, it must be confessed that the dialogue is tolerably strong, even piquante; but in order to please the highly respected public, it is necessary for the play to end well.

Suddenly they one and all—in this land of pietism and sudden conversion—beat their breasts and confess their sins. The Mayor examines himself, and repents that he was selfish enough to marry the elf; his mother repents because she cared more for her son than her daughter-in-law; the elf repents because she almost allowed herself to be betrayed into falling in love; and the Baron’s sister, who, throughout the piece, has always held aloft the banner of love and liberty, repents in a general way, without any particular reason being given. Thus everything returns to its former condition, and Undine remains in the duck-pond.

With this satisfying termination, “The Elf” survived a large number of performances.

The question which suggests itself to my mind is: Whether the author intended the piece to end in this manner? Or was the original ending less conventional, and was Fru Edgren obliged to alter it in order that the play might be acted? What else could she do? A lonely woman like her dared not sin against the public morals. It were better to sin against anything else, only not against the public morals; for in that case they would have condemned her to silence, and her career would have been at an end. The keynote of the piece was the yearning to escape from the long Swedish winters and the gossip by the fireside, out into the fresh air, into the light and warmth of the South.

V

Ten years afterwards Fru Edgren returned to the same problem in “Love and Womanhood,” and this time she treated it with greater delicacy and more depth of feeling.

The heroine is no longer the traditional elf, but the modern girl,—nervous, sensitive, with a sharp intellect and still sharper tongue; she is very critical, very reserved, full of secret aspirations, and very warm-hearted; her heart is capable of becoming a world to the man she loves, but it needs a man’s love to develop its power of loving. She loves an elegant, self-satisfied Swedish lieutenant, who has served as a volunteer in Algiers, and has written a book on military science; he is just an ordinary smart young man, and he takes it for granted that she will accept him the instant he proposes. But she refuses him. He is indignant and hurt; he cannot understand it at all, unless she loves some one else. But no, she does not love any one else. Then what is the reason? She is sure that he does not care enough for her; there is such an indescribable difference between her love for him, or rather the love that she knows herself capable of feeling, and the affection that he has to offer her, that she will not have him on any account, and looks upon his proposal almost in the light of an insult. He goes away, and returns, soon afterwards, engaged to a little goose.

Fru Edgren develops an elaborate theory, to which she returns again and again. According to her, it is only the commonplace little girls of eighteen, innocence in a white pinafore, with whom men fall in love. I myself do not think that there is much in it: a dozen men who are nonentities fall in love with a dozen young women who are likewise nonentities. On the other hand, we have that numerous type, which includes the modern girl, full of soul, originality, and depth of character, clever and modest, possessed of a keen divination with regard to her own feelings and that of others, mingled with a chaste pride that is founded upon the consciousness of her own importance,—a pride that will not accept less than it gives. And these girls are confined to the narrow circle to which all women are reduced, to two or three possibilities in the whole course of their long youth, possibilities which chance throws in their way, and which are perhaps no possibilities at all to them. A few years pass by, and these girls have become stern judges upon the rights of love, and they have developed a bitter expression about the mouth, and a secret gnawing in the soul. A few years more, and this unappreciated womanly instinct will have brought them to hate men.

Fru Edgren went the same way. In her “Sketches from Life” we find some traces of this feeling in the stories where she displays the comparative worth of men and women; take, for instance, the tale called “At War with Society.” But before she had quite joined the army of stern judges, she weighed the problem of love once more, in the second of her five completed novels, called, “Aurora Bunge.”

For the last ten years Aurora Bunge has been chief among the ball beauties of Stockholm. Everything in her life is arranged and settled beforehand. In the winter she goes to balls, night after night, to parties and plays; in the summer she is occupied in much the same way in a fashionable watering-place. For the last ten years she has known exactly with whom she is going to dance, what compliments will be paid her, what offers she will receive, and whom she is eventually going to marry. The marriage can be put off until she is thirty—and now she is nearly thirty, and the time has come. She is one of those girls who have danced and danced until everything has grown equally indifferent and wearisome to them; and yet she is without experience, and is likely to remain so to the end. She allows herself perfect freedom of speech, but she will never allow herself a single free action. A couple of intrigues in the dim future are not entirely excluded from her plans, but what difference will that make? She has something of Strindberg’s “Julie,” but without the latter’s perversity; she is also some years in advance of her. She would have no objection to eloping with a circus rider, or doing something de très mauvais goût, but she knows that she will never do it. The summer previous to the announcement of her engagement she is seized with a fit of liking the country, and she accompanies her mother to one of her properties, which is situated on a desolate part of the coast. It is the first of her thirty summer visits that is not quite comme il faut. In a sudden outburst of enthusiasm for nature, she spends days and weeks wandering about in the woods and fields, with torn dress and down-trodden shoes, and goes out sailing with the fishermen. She becomes stronger and more beautiful, and is more than ever imbued with an indescribable longing. This vague longing leads her on towards that which she is going to experience—which is to be her life’s only experience. She feels her pulses beat and her heart burn within her, and not till then does the matured woman of thirty tear aside the bandage that binds her eyes; and looking out, she cries: Where art thou, who givest me life’s fulness? On one of her boating expeditions, she goes to the nearest lighthouse. The lighthouse-keeper, a strong, quiet young man, comes out. She looks, and she knows that it is he!

Up to this point Fru Edgren has copied the secret writing in her own soul, and every touch is true. But her experience went no further. The part that follows is psychological and logical too, but it has the greatest fault that a romance can have; i.e., it is word for word imagined, not experienced, and for this reason it is overdrawn. Aurora has scarcely landed before a storm sets in. She flutters like an exhausted bird, in and out of the narrow lighthouse. The lighthouse-keeper sees the danger, and hurries down. She wants to throw herself into the water. He climbs down the rocks and seizes hold of her. Already before, this son of the people had found time to give her a love poem to read. The storm lasts three days, and for three days she remains there. On the fourth day the fishermen return to fetch her, and the lighthouse-keeper is furious. By this time she is no better than a very ordinary fisher girl. She is deathly pale, but insists on leaving him. He threatens her with his fists, and she proposes that they should drown themselves together; but his mother had already drowned herself, and he does not wish to have two suicides in the family. Aurora goes home, and they never meet again. A few months afterwards she marries an officer who is in debt.

Fru Edgren’s men may be divided into two types,—the one she cannot endure, but she describes him admirably; the other she cannot describe at all, but she likes him very much indeed. The first is the fashionable man of Stockholm society, who has tasted life’s pleasures, and is wearied of them; the second is the simple, unsophisticated son of the people.

VI

Fru Edgren looked life boldly in the face.—life, which was continually passing her by, because she was a lady, whose duty it was to lead a blameless existence. She was by this time a celebrated authoress, with a comfortable income, but what had she gained by it? Merely this: that envious eyes watched her more narrowly than before, and that she was expected to live for the honor and glory of Sweden, and for the honor and glory of her position as a woman writer. Yet, after all, were they not in the North? And was she not allowed all possible freedom up to a certain point? Even this certain point might be overstepped sometimes,—in private, of course,—and such was the general usage. But she was one of those proud natures who will not tolerate a greasy fingermark on the untarnished shield of their honor, and she was also one of those sovereign natures whose will is a law to themselves.

We are confronted by a strange sight in Scandinavian literature. We find man’s laxity and woman’s prudery existing side by side. Björnson, Ibsen, Garborg, Strindberg, were contemporaries of Fru Edgren, and their renown was at its height. The eighties were the great period of Scandinavian romance, and this romance turned solely upon the problem of man and woman. The productive enthusiasm of those days drove a multitude of women into the fields of literature, including those whom we have mentioned, who died early, and some lesser ones, who still continue to lead a useless, literary existence. But their writings are strangely poor compared with those of the men, even though there were numbered amongst them an Edgren-Leffler, an Ahlgren, and a Kovalevsky. The men were not afraid; they all had something to impart, and that which they imparted was themselves. But there was not a single woman’s voice to join in the mighty chorus of the hymn to love; not one of them had experienced it, and they had nothing to say. Their longing kept silence. When, however, the literature of indignation, with Kalchas Björnson at its head, broke loose against the corruptions and depravity of men, then all the authoresses raised their voices, and instituted a grand inquisition.

Fru Edgren took part in it. What hymn could she sing? She had no experience of love, and her patience was at an end. Towards the end of the eighties, love had completely vanished from her books, and its place had been filled by the question of rights,—women’s rights with regard to property and wage-earning, and marriage rights. “The Doll’s House” was followed by a deluge of books on unhappy marriages, and Fru Edgren contributed to increase their number. In a play called “True Women,” she contrasts the hard-working, wage-earning woman with the indolent, extravagant man; while she severely condemns the woman who so far lowers herself as to love a husband who has been unfaithful to her. She is, in fact, so badly disposed towards love that she allows an honest, hard-working man, in the same piece, to be refused by an honest, hard-working woman, and for the simple reason that superior people must no longer propose, nor allow others to propose to them.

Her drama, “How People do Good,” is written in the same mood. “The Gauntlet” and “The Doll’s House” have exerted such a great influence over her that she has unconsciously quoted whole sentences. She has become no better than the ordinary platform woman; her former sense and good taste are no longer to be observed in her writings, and even socialism has a place in her programme. This woman, who knows nothing of the proletarian, represents him in a melodramatic manner, as she has done before with the son of the people. She travels about the country and fights for her rights; she becomes a propagandist.

It was at this time that the celebrated mathematician, Sonia Kovalevsky, was appointed to the high school at Stockholm at the instigation of Fru Edgren’s brother, Professor Mittag-Leffler, and the two women became the greatest of friends. Sonia Kovalevsky had practiced the principles of women’s rights and asceticism in her own married life, and was now, after her husband had shot himself, a widow.

She was probably Björnson’s model in more than one of his books, and she combined Russian fanaticism with the Russian capacity to please. She had not been long at Stockholm before the war broke loose. Strindberg raged against women, ignoring Fru Edgren and others on the plea that they could not be reckoned as women, since they had no children. Björnson and Fru Edgren were everywhere welcomed at women’s meetings as the champions of women’s rights.

For four or five years Sonia Kovalevsky and Fru Edgren were almost inseparable. Fru Edgren took back her maiden name of Leffler after her separation from her husband. The two friends were always travelling. They went to Norway, France, England, etc., together, and Fru Leffler wrote her longest novel, “A Tale of Summer.” It was the old problem of love and the artistic temperament. A highly gifted artist falls in love with a commonplace schoolmaster,—she nervous, refined, independent; he young, big, strong, true-hearted, and very like a trusty Newfoundland dog. It does not answer. An artist must not marry, the most learned of Newfoundland dogs cannot understand an artist, and yet artists have a most unfortunate preference for Newfoundland dogs.

There was something in this novel that was not to be found in any of her earlier works,—a hasty, uneven beat of the pulse, something of the fever of awakened passion.

Sonia, meantime, was engaged with her work for the Prix Bordin; but she had scarcely begun her studies before she left them to devote herself to a parallel romance, about which she was very much excited. It was called “The Struggle for Happiness: How it Was, and How it Might Have Been.” She persuaded Fru Leffler to give this thought a dramatic setting, and she was very anxious to have it published. It was nothing more or less than a hymn to love, which had fast begun to set flame to her ungovernable Russian blood. Fru Leffler wrote the piece, but it proved an utter failure.

On her travels she made the acquaintance of the Duke of Cajanello, a mathematician, who was probably introduced to her by Sonia Kovalevsky He was professor at the Lyceum at Naples, and Fru Leffler appears to have fallen suddenly and passionately in love. Her last novel bears witness to this fact; like the former one, it treats of “Love and Womanhood,” but here the proof of true womanliness lies in the loving. She was divorced from her husband and went to Italy. Liberty, love, and the South,—all were hers at last.

She had something else besides to satisfy her ambition as a society lady, when, in May, 1890, she became the Duchess of Cajanello. After her marriage she paid a visit to Stockholm with her husband, and every one thought that she looked younger, more gentle, more womanly, and happier than she had ever done before.

After the marriage, her friendship with Sonia Kovalevsky was at an end. The latter had not found happiness in loving, and she died in the year 1891.

The Duchess of Cajanello lived at Naples, and in her forty-third year she experienced for the first time the happiness of becoming a mother. When she died, the little duke was scarcely more than six months old. Up to the last few days of her life, she was to all appearances happy and in good health. Her last work was the life of her friend Sonia Kovalevsky. In writing it she fulfilled the promise which they had made, that whichever of the two survived should write the life—a living portrait it was to be—of the other. She had just begun to correct the proofs before she died. On the last day before her illness, she worked till three o’clock in the afternoon at a novel called “A Narrow Horizon,” which was left unfinished. She died after a few days’ illness.

Fru Edgren-Leffler belonged to that class of women whose senses slumber long because their vital strength gives them the expectation of long youth. But when the day comes that they are awakened, the same vitality that had kept them asleep overflows with an intensity that attracts like a beacon on a dark night. It is the woman who attracts the man, not the reverse. Fru Edgren-Leffler found in her fortieth year that which she had sought for in vain in her twentieth and thirtieth,—love! The unfruitful became fruitful; the emaciated became beautiful; the woman’s rights woman sang a hymn to the mystery of love; and the last short years of happiness, too soon interrupted by death, were a contradiction to the long insipid period of literary production.

THE END

The Keynotes Series.

16mo. Cloth. Each volume with a Titlepage and Cover Design.

By AUBREY BEARDSLEY.

Price $1.00.

I. KEYNOTES. By George Egerton.

II. THE DANCING FAUN. By Florence Farr.

III. POOR FOLK. By Fedor Dostoievsky. Translated from the Russian by Lena Milman. With an Introduction by George Moore.

IV. A CHILD OF THE AGE. By Francis Adams.

V. THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE INMOST LIGHT. By Arthur Machen.

VI. DISCORDS. By George Egerton.

VII. PRINCE ZALESKI. By M. P. Shiel.

VIII. THE WOMAN WHO DID. By Grant Allen.

IX. WOMEN’S TRAGEDIES. By H. D. Lowry.

X. GREY ROSES AND OTHER STORIES. By Henry Harland.

XI. AT THE FIRST CORNER AND OTHER STORIES. By H. B. Marriott Watson.

XII. MONOCHROMES. By Ella D’arcy.

XIII. AT THE RELTON ARMS. By Evelyn Sharp.

XIV. THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. By Gertrude Dix.

XV. THE MIRROR OF MUSIC. By Stanley V. Makower.

XVI. YELLOW AND WHITE. By W. Carlton Dawe.

XVII. THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS. By Fiona Macleod.

XVIII. THE THREE IMPOSTORS. By Arthur Machen.

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John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W.

Messrs. Roberts Brothers’ Publications.

Foam of the Sea.

By GERTRUDE HALL,

Author of “Far from To-day,” “Allegretto,” “Verses,” etc.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

Miss Gertrude Hall’s second volume of short stories, “Foam of the Sea and Other Tales,” shows the same characteristics as the first, which will be instantly remembered under the title of “Far from To-day.” They are vigorous, fanciful, in part quaint, always thought-stirring and thoughtful. She has followed old models somewhat in her style, and the setting of many of the tales is mediæval. The atmosphere of them is fascinating, so unusual and so pervading is it; and always refined are her stories, and graceful, even with an occasional touch of grotesquerie. And there is an underlying subtleness in them, a grasp of the problems of the heart and the head, in short, of life, which is remarkable; and yet they, for the most part, are romantic to a high degree, and reveal an imagination far beyond the ordinary. “Foam of the Sea,” like “Far from To-day,” is a volume of rare tales, beautifully wrought out of the past for the delectation of the present.

Of the six tales in the volume, “Powers of Darkness” alone has a wholly nineteenth century flavor. It is a sermon told through two lives pathetically miserable. “The Late Returning” is dramatic and admirably turned, strong in its heart analysis. “Foam of the Sea” is almost archaic in its rugged simplicity, and “Garden Deadly” (the most imaginative of the six) is beautiful in its descriptions, weird in its setting, and curiously effective. “The Wanderers” is a touching tale of the early Christians, and “In Battlereagh House” there is the best character drawing.

Miss Hall is venturing along a unique line of story telling, and must win the praise of the discriminating.—The Boston Times.

There is something in the quality of the six stories by Gertrude Hall in the volume to which this title is given which will attract attention. They are stories which must—some of them—be read more than once to be appreciated. They are fascinating in their subtlety of suggestion, in their keen analysis of motive, and in their exquisite grace of diction. There is great dramatic power in “Powers of Darkness” and “In Battlereagh House.” They are stories which should occupy more than the idle hour. They are studies.—Boston Advertiser.

She possesses a curious originality, and, what does not always accompany this rare faculty, skill in controlling it and compelling it to take artistic forms.—Mail and Express.

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FAR FROM TO-DAY.

A Volume of Stories.

By GERTRUDE HALL,

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

THESE stories are marked with originality and power. The titles are as follows: viz., Tristiane, The Sons of Philemon, Servirol, Sylvanus, Theodolind, Shepherds.

Miss Hall has put together here a set of gracefully written tales,—tales of long ago. They have an old-world mediæval feeling about them, soft with intervening distance, like the light upon some feudal castle wall, seen through the openings of the forest. A refined fancy and many an artistic touch has been spent upon the composition with good result.—London Bookseller.

“Although these six stories are dreams of the misty past, their morals have a most direct bearing on the present. An author who has the soul to conceive such stories is worthy to rank among the highest. One of our best literary critics, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, says: ‘I think it is a work of real genius, Homeric in its simplicity, and beautiful exceedingly.’”

Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in the Newburyport Herald:—

“A volume giving evidence of surprising genius is a collection of six tales by Gertrude Hall, called ‘Far from To-day.’ I recall no stories at once so powerful and subtle as these. Their literary charm is complete, their range of learning is vast, and their human interest is intense. ‘Tristiane,’ the first one, is as brilliant and ingenious, to say the least, as the best chapter of Arthur Hardy’s ‘Passe Rose;’ ‘Sylvanus’ tells a heart-breaking tale, full of wild delight in hills and winds and skies, full of pathos and poetry; in ‘The Sons of Philemon’ the Greek spirit is perfect, the story absolutely beautiful; ‘Theodolind,’ again, repeats the Norse life to the echo, even to the very measure of the runes; and ‘The Shepherds’ gives another reading to the meaning of ‘The Statue and the Bust.’ Portions of these stories are told with an almost archaic simplicity, while other portions mount on great wings of poetry, ‘Far from To-day,’ as the time of the stories is placed; the hearts that beat in them are the hearts of to-day, and each one of these stories breathes the joy and the sorrow of life, and is rich with the beauty of the world.”

From the London Academy, December 24th:—

“The six stories in the dainty volume entitled ‘Far from To-day’ are of imagination all compact. The American short tales, which have of late attained a wide and deserved popularity in this country, have not been lacking in this vitalizing quality; but the art of Mrs. Slosson and Miss Wilkins is that of imaginative realism, while that of Miss Gertrude Hall is that of imaginative romance; theirs is the work of impassioned observation, hers of impassioned invention. There is in her book a fine, delicate fantasy that reminds one of Hawthorne in his sweetest moods; and while Hawthorne had certain gifts which were all his own, the new writer exhibits a certain winning tenderness in which he was generally deficient. In the domain of pure romance it is long since we have had anything so rich in simple beauty as is the work which is to be found between the covers of ‘Far from To-day.’”

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THE WEDDING GARMENT.

A Tale of the Life to Come.

BY LOUIS PENDLETON.

16mo. Cloth, price, $1.00. White and gold, $1.25.

“The Wedding Garment” tells the story of the continued existence of a young man after his death or departure from the natural world. Awakening in the other world,—in an intermediate region between Heaven and Hell, where the good and the evil live together temporarily commingled,—he is astonished and delighted to find himself the same man in all respects as to every characteristic of his mind and ultimate of the body. So closely does everything about him resemble the world he has left behind, that he believes he is still in the latter until convinced of the error. The young man has good impulses, but is no saint, and he listens to the persuasions of certain persons who were his friends in the world, but who are now numbered among the evil, even to the extent of following them downward to the very confines of Hell. Resisting at last and saving himself, later on, and after many remarkable experiences, he gradually makes his way through the intermediate region to the gateways of Heaven,—which can be found only by those prepared to enter,—where he is left with the prospect before him of a blessed eternity in the company of the woman he loves.

The book is written in a reverential spirit, it is unique and quite unlike any story of the same type heretofore published, full of telling incidents and dramatic situations, and not merely a record of the doings of sexless “shades” but of living human beings.

The one grand practical lesson which this book teaches, and which is in accord with the divine Word and the New Church unfoldings of it everywhere teach, is the need of an interior, true purpose in life. The deepest ruling purpose which we cherish, what we constantly strive for and determine to pursue as the most real and precious thing of life, that rules us everywhere, that is our ego, our life, is what will have its way at last. It will at last break through all disguise; it will bring all external conduct into harmony with itself. If it be an evil and selfish end, all external and fair moralities will melt away, and the man will lose his common sense and exhibit his insanities of opinion and will and answering deed on the surface. But if that end be good and innocent, and there be humility within, the outward disorders and evils which result from one’s heredity or surroundings will finally disappear.—From Rev. John Goddard’s discourse, July 1, 1894.

Putting aside the question as to whether the scheme of the soul’s development after death was or was not revealed to Swedenborg, whether or not the title of seer can be added to the claims of this learned student of science, all this need not interfere with the moral influence of this work, although the weight of its instruction must be greatly enforced on the minds of those who believe in a later inspiration than the gospels.

This story begins where others end; the title of the first chapter, “I Die,” commands attention; the process of the soul’s disenthralment is certainly in harmony with what we sometimes read in the dim eyes of friends we follow to the very gate of life. “By what power does a single spark hold to life so long ... this lingering of the divine spark of life in a body growing cold?” It is the mission of the author to tear from Death its long-established thoughts of horror, and upon its entrance into a new life, the soul possesses such a power of adjustment that no shock is experienced.—Boston Transcript.

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, BOSTON, MASS.

POOR FOLK.

A Novel.

Translated from the Russian of Fedor Dostoievsky, by Lena Milman, with decorative titlepage and a critical introduction by George Moore. American Copyright edition.

16mo. Cloth. $1.00.

A capable critic writes: “One of the most beautiful, touching stories I have read. The character of the old clerk is a masterpiece, a kind of Russian Charles Lamb. He reminds me, too, of Anatole France’s ‘Sylvestre Bonnard,’ but it is a more poignant, moving figure. How wonderfully, too, the sad little strokes of humor are blended into the pathos in his characterization, and how fascinating all the naive self-revelations of his poverty become,—all his many ups and downs and hopes and fears. His unsuccessful visit to the money-lender, his despair at the office, unexpectedly ending in a sudden burst of good fortune, the final despairing cry of his love for Varvara,—these hold one breathless. One can hardly read them without tears.... But there is no need to say all that could be said about the book. It is enough to say that it is over powerful and beautiful.”

We are glad to welcome a good translation of the Russian Dostoievsky’s story “Poor Folk,” Englished by Lena Milman. It is a tale of unrequited love, conducted in the form of letters written between a poor clerk and his girl cousin whom he devotedly loves, and who finally leaves him to marry a man not admirable in character who, the reader feels, will not make her happy. The pathos of the book centres in the clerk, Makar’s, unselfish affection and his heart-break at being left lonesome by his charming kinswoman whose epistles have been his one solace. In the conductment of the story, realistic sketches of middle-class Russian life are given, heightening the effect of the denoument. George Moore writes a sparkling introduction to the book.—Hartford Courant.

Dostoievsky is a great artist. “Poor Folk” is a great novel.—Boston Advertiser.

It is a most beautiful and touching story, and will linger in the mind long after the book is closed. The pathos is blended with touching bits of humor, that are even pathetic in themselves.—Boston Times.

Notwithstanding that “Poor Folk” is told in that most exasperating and entirely unreal style—by letters—it is complete in sequence, and the interest does not flag as the various phases in the sordid life of the two characters are developed. The theme is intensely pathetic and truly human, while its treatment is exceedingly artistic. The translator, Lena Milman, seems to have well preserved the spirit of the original.—Cambridge Tribune.

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, BOSTON, MASS.

THE WOMAN WHO DID.

BY GRANT ALLEN.

Keynotes Series. American Copyright Edition.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

A very remarkable story, which in a coarser hand than its refined and gifted author could never have been effectively told; for such a hand could not have sustained the purity of motive, nor have portrayed the noble, irreproachable character of Herminia Barton.—Boston Home Journal.

“The Woman Who Did” is a remarkable and powerful story. It increases our respect for Mr. Allen’s ability, nor do we feel inclined to join in throwing stones at him as a perverter of our morals and our social institutions. However widely we may differ from Mr. Allen’s views on many important questions, we are bound to recognize his sincerity, and to respect him accordingly. It is powerful and painful, but it is not convincing. Herminia Barton is a woman whose nobleness both of mind and of life we willingly concede; but as she is presented to us by Mr. Allen, there is unmistakably a flaw in her intellect. This in itself does not detract from the reality of the picture.—The Speaker.

In the work itself, every page, and in fact every line, contains outbursts of intellectual passion that places this author among the giants of the nineteenth century.—American Newsman.

Interesting, and at times intense and powerful.—Buffalo Commercial.

No one can doubt the sincerity of the author.—Woman’s Journal.

The story is a strong one, very strong, and teaches a lesson that no one has a right to step aside from the moral path laid out by religion, the law, and society.—Boston Times.

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DISCORDS.

A Volume of Stories.

By GEORGE EGERTON, author of “Keynotes.”

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT EDITION.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

George Egerton’s new volume entitled “Discords,” a collection of short stories, is more talked about, just now, than any other fiction of the day. The collection is really stories for story-writers. They are precisely the quality which literary folk will wrangle over. Harold Frederic cables from London to the “New York Times” that the book is making a profound impression there. It is published on both sides, the Roberts House bringing it out in Boston. George Egerton, like George Eliot and George Sand, is a woman’s nom de plume. The extraordinary frankness with which life in general is discussed in these stories not unnaturally arrests attention.—Lilian Whiting.

The English woman, known as yet only by the name of George Egerton, who made something of a stir in the world by a volume of strong stories called “Keynotes,” has brought out a new book under the rather uncomfortable title of “Discords.” These stories show us pessimism run wild; the gloomy things that can happen to a human being are so dwelt upon as to leave the impression that in the author’s own world there is no light. The relations of the sexes are treated of in bitter irony, which develops into actual horror as the pages pass. But in all this there is a rugged grandeur of style, a keen analysis of motive, and a deepness of pathos that stamp George Egerton as one of the greatest women writers of the day. “Discords” has been called a volume of stories; it is a misnomer, for the book contains merely varying episodes in lives of men and women, with no plot, no beginning nor ending.—Boston Traveller.

This is a new volume of psychological stories from the pen and brains of George Egerton, the author of “Keynotes.” Evidently the titles of the author’s books are selected according to musical principles. The first story in the book is “A Psychological Moment at Three Periods.” It is all strength rather than sentiment. The story of the child, of the girl, and of the woman is told, and told by one to whom the mysteries of the life of each are familiarly known. In their very truth, as the writer has so subtly analyzed her triple characters, they sadden one to think that such things must be; yet as they are real, they are bound to be disclosed by somebody and in due time. The author betrays remarkable penetrative skill and perception, and dissects the human heart with a power from whose demonstration the sensitive nature may instinctively shrink even while fascinated with the narration and hypnotized by the treatment exhibited.—Courier.

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Balzac in English.

Memoirs of Two Young Married Women.

By Honoré de Balzac.

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 12mo. Half Russia. Price, $1.50.

“There are,” says Henry James in one of his essays, “two writers in Balzac,—the spontaneous one and the reflective one, the former of which is much the more delightful, while the latter is the more extraordinary.” It is the reflective Balzac, the Balzac with a theory, whom we get in the “Deux Jeunes Mariées,” now translated by Miss Wormeley under the title of “Memoirs of Two Young Married Women.” The theory of Balzac is that the marriage of convenience, properly regarded, is far preferable to the marriage simply from love, and he undertakes to prove this proposition by contrasting the careers of two young girls who have been fellow-students at a convent. One of them, the ardent and passionate Louise de Chaulieu, has an intrigue with a Spanish refugee, finally marries him, kills him, as she herself confesses, by her perpetual jealousy and exaction, mourns his loss bitterly, then marries a golden-haired youth, lives with him in a dream of ecstasy for a year or so, and this time kills herself through jealousy wrongfully inspired. As for her friend, Renée de Maucombe, she dutifully makes a marriage to please her parents, calculates coolly beforehand how many children she will have and how they shall be trained; insists, however, that the marriage shall be merely a civil contract till she and her husband find that their hearts are indeed one; and sees all her brightest visions realized—her Louis an ambitious man for her sake and her children truly adorable creatures. The story, which is told in the form of letters, fairly scintillates with brilliant sayings, and is filled with eloquent discourses concerning the nature of love, conjugal and otherwise. Louise and Renée are both extremely sophisticated young women, even in their teens; and those who expect to find in their letters the demure innocence of the Anglo-Saxon type will be somewhat astonished. The translation, under the circumstances, was rather a daring attempt, but it has been most felicitousy done.—The Beacon.

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GEORGE SAND IN ENGLISH.

NANON.

Translated by ELIZABETH WORMELEY LATIMER.

It is, I think, one of the prettiest and most carefully constructed of her later works, and the best view of the French Revolution from a rural point of view that I know.—Translator.

“Nanon” is a pure romance, chaste in style and with a charm of sentiment well calculated to appeal to the most thoughtful reader. George Sand has chosen the epoch of the French Revolution as the scene of this last theme from her prolific pen, and she invests the time with all the terrible significance that belongs to it. To the literary world nothing that comes from her pen is unwelcome, the more so as in this instance there is not the least trace of that risky freedom of speech that too often disfigures the best work of the French school of fiction. Nanon will be read with an appreciation of the gifted novelist that is by no means new, and her claim to recognition is made stronger and better by this masterly work. Her admirers—and they will be sure not to miss Nanon—will feel a debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer for a translation that preserves so well the clear, flowing style and the lofty thoughts of the original; and the publishers, no less than the reading public, ought to consider themselves fortunate in the choice of so competent a translator.—The American Hebrew.

This is among the finest of George Sand’s romances, and one who has not made acquaintance with her works would do well to choose it as the introductory volume. It belongs in the list of the best works of that remarkable author, and contains nothing that is objectionable or at all questionable in its moral tone. The scenes are laid among the peasantry of France—simple-hearted, plodding, honest people, who know little or nothing of the causes which are fomenting to bring about the French Revolution. She portrays in clear and forcible language the destitute condition of the rural districts, whose people were ignorant, priest-ridden, and oppressed; and she shows the wretchedness and misery that these poor people were compelled to endure during the progress of the Revolution. The book is one of her masterpieces, by reason of the exquisite delineations of character, the keen and philosophical thought, the purity of inspiration, and the delicacy and refinement of style. Throughout the story there is a freshness and vigor which only one can feel who has lived at some time in close intimacy with fields and woods, and become familiar with the forms, the colors, and the sounds of Nature. The book has been translated by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, who has performed her task admirably.—Public Opinion.

Mrs. Latimer has achieved marked success in the translation of this charming tale, preserving its purity, its simplicity, and its pastoral beauty.—Christian Union.

One volume, 12mo, half Russia, uniform with our edition of “Balzac” and “Sand” novels. Price, $1.50.

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.

A Beautiful Betrothal and Wedding Gift.

THE

Lover’s Year-Book of Poetry.

A Collection of Love Poems for Every Day in the Year.

By HORACE P. CHANDLER.

First Series. Vol. I. January to June. Bicolor, $1.25; white and gold, $1.50. Vol. II. July to December. Bicolor, $1.25; white and gold, $1.50.

Second Series. Vol. I. January to June. Bicolor, $1.25; white and gold, $1.50. Vol. II. July to December. Bicolor, $1.25; white and gold, $1.50.

The Poems in the First Series touch upon Love prior to Marriage; those in the Second Series are of Married-Life and Child-Life.

These two beautiful volumes, clad in the white garb which is emblematic of the purity of married love as well as the innocence of childhood, make up a series unique in its plan and almost perfect in its carrying out. It would be impossible to specify any particular poems of the collection for special praise. They have been selected with unerring taste and judgment, and include some of the most exquisite poems in the language. Altogether the four volumes make up a treasure-house of Love poetry unexcelled for sweetness and purity of expression. Transcript, Boston.

Mr. Chandler has drawn from many and diverse wells of English poetry of Love, as the list for any month shows. The poetry of passion is not here, but there are many strains of Love such as faithful lovers feel.—Literary World, Boston.

We do not hesitate to pronounce it a collection of extraordinary freshness and merit. It is not in hackneyed rhymes that his lovers converse, but in fresh metres from the unfailing fountains.—Independent, New York.

Mr. Chandler is catholic in his tastes, and no author of repute has been omitted who could give variety or strength to the work. The children have never been reached in verse in a more comprehensive and connected manner than they are in this book.—Gazette, Boston.

A very dainty and altogether bewitching little anthology. For each day in each month of two years (each series covering a year) a poem is given celebrating the emotions that beset the heart of the true lover. The editor has shown his exquisite taste in selection, and his wide and varied knowledge of the literature of English and American poetry. Every poem in these books is a perfect gem of sentiment; either tender, playful, reproachful, or supplicatory in its meaning; there is not a sonnet nor a lyric that one could wish away.—Beacon, Boston.

“The selections,” says Louise Chandler Moulton, “given us are nearly all interesting, and some of them are not only charming but unhackneyed.”—Herald, Boston.

A collection of Love poems selected with exquisite judgment from the best known English and American poets of the last three centuries, with a few translations.—Home Journal, Boston.

There are many beautiful poems gathered into this treasure-house, and so great is the variety which has been given to the whole that the monotony which would seem to be the necessary accompaniment of the choice of a single theme is overcome.—Courier, Boston.

The selections are not fragments, but are for the most part complete poems. Nearly every one of the poems is a literary gem, and they represent nearly all the famous names in poetry.—Daily Advertiser, Boston.

Selected with great taste and judgment from a wide variety of sources, and providing a body of verse of the highest order.—Commercial Advertiser, Buffalo.

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FOOTNOTES: