Place, dense walls of poplars at Caudebec, and their fairy-like green lines upon the hills, the blaze of mountain ash trees in the clear blue morning at Splügen,

All sorts of pleasant little incidents happen in September which are good to think of and talk over in February. I remember, for instance, being in the inn at Thusis with the great poet Carducci. He was a lion-like old man with a noble mane, and an elaborately knotted and gorgeously tasselled red silk tie. He had with him a young couple, a lady who spoke the most wonderful Italian, and her husband, whom they both called "Johu." The Signora's language was literally come una canzone, like a song. It was an enchantment to listen to its long drawn out cadences. The three played dominoes for halfpence by the hour together, scrambling and fighting delightfully over quei miseri soldi as the poet called them. The waiter pointed him out to me in an awestruck whisper, standing in the doorway Poeta."

and murmuring "Grande

Again there comes to mind a September Sunday at Orvieto. I and my

friend had been to Mass in the cathedral, where an officious little choirboy for some reason or other had taken away my chair. We thought no more about it, but no sooner were we back in the inn than one of the canons entered, bringing with him the father of the offending boy. They had come, with true Umbrian gentleness, to apologize for the mishap. We talked a little, and asked if it would be possible to see the famous reliquary enclosing the miraculous Corporal of Bolsena, which is kept in the cathedral and only shown to the faithful twice a year, at Corpus Christi and on Easter Day. The canon said that at four o'clock we might see it. Strolling innocently to the cathedral at that hour we were astonished to find a man in a surplice

waiting for us at the door, who beckoned us into the chapel where the relic is kept, and still more astonished to find a devout, expectant congregation assembled. It had evidently been noised abroad that the Santissimo Corporale was to be shown to the two English milords, and the faithful of Orvieto had gathered as far-off sharers in the sight. It was a little Easter Day for the entire population. We were motioned to two kneeling-chairs before the altar, and almost immediately a procession entered with incense and candles, singing "Pange Lingua.” There were four priests in silver copes, the chief of whom unlocked the shrine with a key that turned four times, and while the people were at their devotions a canon exhibited and explained to the two English heretics the glorious reliquary and its priceless relic.

It is pleasant, too, to remember such experiences as being taken out on the Adriatic from Chioggia by a crew of stalwart ruffians who were only with the utmost difficulty prevailed upon to put one on shore, or losing the track in an Alpine pine-wood, or being overtaken by a thunderstorm at evening in the Alps. Again, I call to mind the temporale that burst upon us as my friend and I walked from Airolo to Göschenen, and the weirdness of the tunnels through which we passed.

In

a barber's shop at Göschenen that same evening I remember discussing with an Italian workman the exact shade of meaning expressed by the word stufo. I suppose "stalled," "fed up," would be its equivalent in English slang. "Stufo è materiale," he explained.

Amid so many lovely places, seen in past Septembers, which is the spot that above all others is the home of the spirit of holiday? I can imagine many answers to the question. I am tempted by Verona, by the forest of green umbrellas in the Piazza dell' Erbe, and the huge cypresses in the Giusti gardens.

But the loveliest place in all the world is, after all, on English soil. It is, no doubt, Clovelly, "in the sweet shire of Devon." It is the one place in the world which it is impossible to spoil. No motor-car can scorch down that steep street. Nowhere, I think, are The Outlook.

there such September seas and skies; nowhere are there such myrtles and geraniums; nowhere does such a little crooked pier of stone run out into the sea. It is what the Italian lakes ought to be, and are not.

R. L. G.

Lovers of dogs will find Dr. A. J. Sewell's "The Dog's Medical Dictionary," an English work of which E. P. Dutton & Co. are the American pub lishers a very complete and satisfactory encyclopædia of the diseases of dogs, their diagnosis and treatment, and the physical development of the dog. The arrangement is topical and alphabetical, which facilitates refer

ence.

Among the October publications of Moffat, Yard & Co. will be "Dan Beard's Animal Book," a book so full of story and adventure as to make a special appeal to boy readers; "Ibsen as He Should be Read" by Edwin Bjorkman, a scholarly yet popular interpre tation of Ibsen; "The Art of William Blake," an elaborately illustrated study of the great artist, containing both autobiographic and illustrative material which is altogether new; and "Persia the Land of Yesterday," a fully illustrated description of a land with a long past which is just now coming forward rather unexpectedly into a place among the civilizations of to-day.

In "The Shepherd Song on the Hills of Lebanon," by Rev. Faddoul Moghabghab, we have a unique interpretation of the Twenty-Third Psalm, by one who was himself born on the slopes of Mount Lebanon and to whom

the life of the Syrian shepherd which gives its coloring to the matchless Psalm is the familiar experience of every day. This personal note adds a new meaning to the tender imagery of the shepherd psalmist. The book is prettily illustrated. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Thoreau has not been altogether crowded aside by the multitude of latterday "Nature-writers," some of whom have little but a "precious" style to commend them. People who read him, or re-read him, in the pretty "Bijou Edition" in which Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. present this year his "Cape Cod," "Excursions," "The Maine Woods," "Walden" and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" will understand why he still holds his place after so many years. Nathan H. Dole, Charles G. D. Roberts, Annie Russell Marble and others furnish appreciative and interpretive introductions, and each volume has a frontispiece.

Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company open early their fall budget of books for young people. Among their first issues are "Randy's Prince" the eighth and final volume in Amy Brooks's series of "Randy books," which brings Randy's career to a fitting conclusion of gentle sentiment; "Marion's Vacation" by Nina Rhoades, which describes sympathetically the experiences

of a city school girl in a Vermont village; "The Great Year," by A. T. Dudley, which continues the Phillips-Exeter Series with a spirited narrative of the athletic exertions and triumphs of the football, baseball and track and field athletic teams of the Exeter boys; and "A Little Prospector" by Edith M. H. Baylor, a story for younger boys of what befell a Boston lad in the way of new experience and adventure among the mines of Nevada. All four books are illustrated..

The list of new books announced by A. C. McClurg & Co. for publication this month includes a new story by Randall Parrish entitled "Beth Norvell," a Rocky mountain romance, and a story by Mrs. Hinkson. In the realm of gift books, Mrs. Frances Kinsley Hutchinson has provided a chronicle of the planning, the building, and the arrangement of an attractive country place, the title of which is "Our Country Home," which will be profusely illustrated from the author's photographs; while Mrs. MacMahan, so well known as the compiler of those distinctive works, "Florence in the Poetry of the Brownings," "With Shelley in Italy," etc., has a new book constructed on similar lines entitled "With Wordsworth in England," in which she presents an unusually intimate picture of the England of Wordsworth's time, as reflected in his poetry.

Every public library and every considerable private library should find a place upon its shelves for the two modest and inexpensive volumes in which Mr. Ernest A. Baker, under the title "History in Fiction," furnishes a guide to the best historical romances, sagas, novels and tales. One volume is devoted to English fiction, and one to American and foreign fiction. In both, the arrangement is chronological ac

One

cording to the period in which the story is laid; and in each case a brief descriptive note regarding the book, its publisher and price is appended. Books of juvenile fiction are indicated. among many uses of the guide is that it enables any reader to obtain a vivid impression of the character and chief personages of any period through the pages of the fiction of the best romancers. Either as an accompaniment of the study of history, or an incitement to it, such reading is profitable. E. P. Dutton & Co.

The twenty-seventh volume of the series of reprints of Early Western Travels of which Dr. Reuben Goldthwaites is the general editor, and the Arthur H. Clark Company of Cleveland, the publishers, completes, in the first hundred pages Edmund Flagg's narrative of his travels in the far west during the years 1836-1837, and reproduces the whole of the "Letters and Sketches" in which Father Pierre Jean de Smet narrated the incidents of his year's residence among the Indian tribes of the Rocky mountains. Chronologically these narratives belong together, for they have to do with the same period and the same region; but there is a deeper element of personal interest în the account which the devoted Jesuit priest gives from week to week of his experiences among the Indians, and a naiveté and simplicity which are rare in more formal narratives. As this series approaches completion, the reader is increasingly impressed with the service which it renders in bringing together in convenient form and in exact reprint these records, otherwise widely scattered and difficult of access, of an important period in our national history. This volume is illustrated with quaint pictures reproduced from the first edition of Father de Smet's book.