staked everything on one hand, and they lose. They have driven the blood until it will drive no further, they have played their nerves up to the point where any relaxation short of absolute annihilation is impossible. Every idealist abuses his nerves, and every sentimentalist brutally abuses them. And in the end, the nerves get even. Nobody ever cheats them, really. Then "the awakening" comes. Sometimes it comes in the form of arsenic, as it came to "Emma Bovary," sometimes it is carbolic acid taken covertly in the police station, a goal to which unbalanced idealism not infrequently leads. "Edna Pontellier," fanciful and romantic to the last, chose the sea on a summer night and went down with the sound of her first lover's spurs in her ears, and the scent of pinks about her. And next time I hope that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better cause. _Pittsburg Leader_, July 8, 1899 _Stephen Crane_ "WAR IS KIND." Stephen Crane. $2.50. New York: F. A. Stokes & Co. Pittsburg: J. R. Weldin & Co. This truly remarkable book is printed on dirty gray blotting paper, on each page of which is a mere dot of print over a large I of vacancy. There are seldom more than ten lines on a page, and it would be better if most of those lines were not there at all. Either Mr. Crane is insulting the public or insulting himself, or he has developed a case of atavism and is chattering the primeval nonsense of the apes. His "Black Riders," uneven as it was, was a casket of polished masterpieces when compared with "War Is Kind." And it is not kind at all, Mr. Crane; when it provokes such verses as these, it is all that Sherman said it was. The only production in the volume that is at all coherent is the following, from which the book gets its title: Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind, Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky, And the affrighted steed ran on alone. Do not weep, War is kind. Hoarse booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them. Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind, Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Raged at the breast, gulped and died. Do not weep, War is kind. Swift-blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing, And a field where a thousand corpses lie. Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright, splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep, War is kind.