poetry as Robert Frost's "North of Boston." Here you will meet many men
and women struggling against the loneliness of prairie life, and winning
spiritual as well as material conquests out of nature. The greater part
of this volume is composed of a series of narrative poems entitled "The
Neighborhood." Their lack of literary sophistication is part of their
charm, and the calculated ruggedness of the author's style is a faithful
reflection of his barren physical background.

BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES, compiled and edited by _Thomas Seltzer_
(Boni and Liveright). This is the first anthology of Russian short
stories which has yet been published in English, and the selections are
excellent. There is a wide range of literary art represented in this
volume, and the translations are extremely smooth and idiomatic. As is
only fitting, the work of Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Turgenev, and other
Russians, whose work is already well known to the American reader, are
only represented lightly in the collection, and greater space is
devoted to the stories of Chekhov and other writers less familiar to the
American public. Nineteen stories are translated from the work of
Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Saltykov, Korolenko,
Garshin, Chekhov, Sologub, Potapenko, Semyonov, Gorky, Andreyev,
Artzybashev, and Kuprin, and the volume is prefixed with an excellent
critical introduction by the editor.

A COUNTRY CHILD by _Grant Showerman_ (The Century Co.). This is a sequel
to Professor Showerman's earlier volume, "A Country Chronicle." The book
is an epic of what a little boy saw and felt and dreamed on a farm in
Wisconsin forty years ago, told just as a little boy would tell it. It
will help you to remember how you went to the circus and how you stayed
up late on your birthday. You will also recall the ball game the day you
didn't go home from school, and how you went in swimming, and about that
fight with Bill, and ever so many other things which you thought that
you had forgotten. I think all the boys and girls that used to write to
James Whitcomb Riley should send a birthday letter this year to Grant
Showerman, so that he will get it on the 9th of January. Let's start a
movement in Wisconsin to have a Showerman Day.

FLAME AND THE SHADOW-EATER by _Henrietta Weaver_ (Henry Holt & Co.). In
these fifteen short allegorical tales Henrietta Weaver has introduced
with considerable skill much Persian philosophy, and presented it to the