nsome personality
always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
sides of the conflict.

THE RECKONING

is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.

IOLE

Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.

One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through
"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.

Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no stra