Balkan soil. Not only the Russian, but the Servian and Bulgarian Legations accepted the services of the spy. Pretending, or authorized to act as "Financial Agent of the Russian Ministry of the Interior," Mosevitch took advantage of the revolutionary disorders in Russia to push his audacity to extraordinary lengths. He had a sumptuous mansion in the Bulgarian capital alongside of the Turkish Ministry. Cabinet ministers, deputies, leading journalists, foreign ambassadors consulted his Excellency Mosevitch Weysmann. He was continually travelling between Vienna and Constantinople. At the same time his wife, a former mistress of one of his houses of ill-fame, contrived to obtain the confidence of Queen Draga of Servia, who was then exposed to peculiar anxiety through the lack of an heir to King Alexander II. The famous "false pregnancy" of Queen Draga was arranged by Mosevitch and his worthy spouse, and "an heir-apparent" was procured for presentation to the Servian nation as the child of miracle of the House of Obrenovitch.

After the catastrophe in Servia, Mosevitch entered into confidential relations with the Sultan Abdul Hamid, The Outlook.

always in quest of spies. At Yildiz Kiosk Mosevitch met the cognate Maimon who is now under lock and key at Paris. Then he appeared at Petersburg, accompanied by financial brethren from Italy, in order to effect a financial reorganization and extension of important houses of debauch in the Russian capital. Protected by his functions as secret political spy he believed that he could extend the white slave trade in Russia under conditions of exceptional favor. But something occurred to direct the attention of the Russian police to the enterprising cosmopolitan. He tried to escape, as he had escaped from the Odessa police inspector, but, alas! Mosevitch was fated this time to be prosecuted. Though no proofs could be obtained for the thousandth part of his infamies. enough was known to send to a cell in a Russian gaol the international spy, the white slaver, the foster-parent of a fictitious Crown Prince, the host and guest of diplomatists and statesmen, the confidant of Abdul Hamid, the accomplice of Maimon of Paris, the prosperous, the persecuted, the all-blackguardly Mosevitch Weysmann, the cosmopolitan pearl from Odessa.

Professor William Cleaver Wilkinson's "Daniel Webster" (Funk & Wagnalls Co.) is written as a vindication of Mr. Webster, both as to his public and private character. It is written with zeal, not always tempered with discretion; and it brings together many interesting facts regarding the career and character of the great statesman. But Professor Wilkinson would have done well to restrict himself to prose. His ode on Webster is feeble and tedious. Grouped in the same volume are four

or five other historical or biographical papers.

"Out of Russia" was Professor Shisken, the distinguished physicist. but the Brotherhood to which he had sworn allegiance in his youth laid its commands on his tranquil age, and sent him from his laboratory in New York to cover with a deep-sea dredging expedition its search in the Baltic for buried gold. Of his adventures and those of the fascinating young revolu

tionist, sent to the United States to intercept a letter gone astray, of the rich American who falls in love with her, the scheming rascal who valets the lover, the burly frontiersman who is brother to the valet, the variety actress who coquettes with the frontiersman, and sundry minor characters, Crittenden Marriott has woven a light, ingenious tale which many readers will find diverting on a summer afternoon. J. B. Lippincott Co.

The title of R. E. Vernède's story "Quietness of Dick" will not, it is to be hoped, mislead the boy readers for whom it is intended, into the assumption that it is an over-quiet tale. On the contrary, there is plenty of excitement in it, and plenty of humor and both of a genuine and unforced quality. We do not recall that Mr. Vernède has before essayed to write for boys, but youngsters of from fourteen to eighteen whose happy lot it is to come upon this book will hope that he may go right on, writing more like it. The book shows the same cleverness which characterizes the author in his writing for older people; and, from the frontispiece which depicts the upset of Dick and Tod to the closing chapter which describes their capture of "Captain François," there are no dull pages. Henry Holt & Co.

Mothers and fathers, grandmammas and grandpapas, aunts and even uncles will enjoy Mary Heaton Vorse's studies of "The Very Little Person." Though the story is continuous, each of its chapters is complete in itself— "The Smile," "The Conquest of the Feet," "The Passing of the Shadow," and the rest of the eight-and each will make a delightful half-hour's reading for the family group. Most amusing of all, intensely realistic and up-to-date, with its picture of the scrupulous young mother and the contemptuous grandmothers looking on, is "The Baby

and the Theory." But none appeals to more varied emotions than the first, which describes the welcome of "Mr. Greatrax's Baby" and his own initiation into the fellowship of fathers. Illustrations in characteristic vein by Rose O'Neill add to the attractiveness of a dainty volume which one would fain buy to give away by the dozen. Houghton Mifflin Co.

The revived interest in Poe will ensure a welcome for the edition of "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe" which Mr. J. H. Whitty has edited, and to which he has prefixed a memoir containing a good deal of fresh information. Mr. Whitty has had access to the files of the Richmond Examiner, the unpublished "Recollections of Poe," written by F. W. Thomas, his associate on the Examiner, and to Poe's own final revisions of the text of his poems. From these sources he has been able to gather several hitherto unpublished poems by Poe, and some others attributed to him, and some fresh biographical material. Mr. Whitty also furnishes full notes and a variorum text of the poems,-this last a task of great difficulty and labor, as Poe continually revised his verse, and few of his poems appear in the same form in any two different editions. Altogether, Mr. Whitty's laborious researches and comparisons, representing the toil of many years, make this the definitive edition of Poe's writings in verse. The illustrations include a portrait never previously reproduced, a view of the Southern Literary Messenger building at Richmond, Virginia, which is still standing, a picture of the desk at which Poe wrote, and a facsimile of a fragment of a poem. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Intensely realistic is Gustav Frenssen's latest book, "Flaus Hinrich Baas, Of The Story of a Self-made Man."

sturdy peasant stock from the lower Elbe, young Klaus is left at fifteen, by his father's death, the man of the house, with debts to pay. With extraordinary vividness of detail are described the laborious months spent in working about the Hamburg wharves; the three years of broadening ambition and capacity as a clerk in a commission merchant's office; the period of military service during which Klaus finds time to read and to acquire some knowledge of languages; the four years in India, where he is sent to look up an abandoned tin-mine; the return to civilization, the delight in home-comforts and the ill-considered marriage with a narrow, prim young girl in a town too small to afford any scope for enterprise and too conservative to sympathize with it; the estrangement and separation; the old firm in Hamburg saved from failure, and its rapid, but not incredible, success under his management; the marriage to the daughter of one of the partners; and, finally, the daring venture in Shanghai to retrieve the blunder of a brother-in-law with more respect for tradition than for initiative. As the record of the experiences which make the successful business man, one can hardly praise the book too highly. But the parallel and equally detailed record of the emotions and adventures of adolescence, and of the episode intervening between the two marriages, will give offence to readers whose consciences acquit them of either narrowness or primness. Not only the hero's practice, but his theory, runs directly counter to the received standards of morality, and the frequent and quite uncalled-for intrusion of smutty little stories into the narrative forbids one to excuse its vagaries as those of an idealist. The Macmillan Co.

A story which one cannot praise as it deserves without being suspected of

exaggeration is "People of Popham," by Mary C. E. Wemyss, author of "The Professional Aunt." Simple and natural, full of a gay humor which often flashes into real wit, with an undertone of tenderness and pathos, it is one of the most charming chronicles of village life ever written. Among its characters are Lady Victoria herself, at Great Popham, whose doctor manages her so beautifully, knowing exactly the kind of disease a well-bred woman can have; Sir Popham, who, like lots of simple men, would like to be thought wicked; beautiful Mary Howard with her optimistic, improvident husband and her adoring children; Mrs. Dare, the vicar's wife, explaining to the newcomer, who asks if there is any work she can do, that we have hangings for all seasons of the church's year; Mr. Gray, the curate, of whom Lady Victoria is sure some one must once have proposed to him-it leaves a look and a cautiousness which is unnatural-she can always tell; Mrs. Durnford, the doctor's wife, who labors under the delusion that there is virtue in saying exactly what she thinks; her daughter, fresh from a school in France, with the sort of eyes that mean trouble for some one; the Miss Franklyns with their miniatures, black chairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and herbaceous border; old Betsy Marker, who was counted a good washer-up once; Mrs. Mangle, the excellent cook, Mangle, the first-class butler, and their pathetic little encumbrance; Ruth, the donkey, to whom one thistle in the mouth is no doubt worth all the purple distances in the world-all these are sketched with deft, loving touches by Christian Hope, herself, in the opinion of her faithful Jane, "not exactly a maiden lady, for maiden ladies are elderly, as a rule," but with a ripened discrimination and tolerance which do not come to girls in their first youth. Houghton Mifflin Co.