_George Washington Cable._--George W. Cable (born in 1844) has immortalised the picturesque Creole life of Louisiana in the nineteenth century. Born in New Orleans of Virginian and New England stock, he had little school training and early became a clerk. At nineteen he entered the Confederate Army, serving till the close of the war. Then he became in succession a civil engineer and an accountant, contributing meanwhile to the New Orleans _Picayune_. Seven of his stories were collected and published in 1879 as “Old Creole Days.” “The Grandissimes” (1880), which remains his best work, is a graphic and faithful picture of New Orleans life of a century ago, embodying romance and realism. “Madame Delphine” (1881) is a touching story of a heroic old quadroon woman. In “Dr. Sevier” (1884), Cable has studied in romantic vein an exceptional type of character, though not with marked success. “Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana” (1888), a better book, is a chapter of ethical history. “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” appeared in 1889. Less interesting as fiction, but valuable as a social study, is “John March, Southerner” (1894), a story of Southern Reconstruction. “The Cavalier” (1901) goes back to the Civil War, but subordinates interest in the conflict to interest in character; while “Bylow Hill” (1902) is a tragic story of insane jealousy, the scene being New England. Since 1885, Mr. Cable has lived at Northampton, Massachusetts. His later work, like that of many another, has probably suffered from a natural tendency to subordinate the artistic to the ethical. But in the province which he has made his own, the pioneer remains supreme. “Few recent American novelists,” Professor Richardson justly remarks, “have shown so uniform an average of attainment in thought and art, or have thrown upon the quaintly real such new tints of ideal light.” _Albion Winegar Tourgee._--Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905), an Ohioan, studied (1858-61) at the University of Rochester, saw service in the Union Army, and afterward became an editor and lawyer at Greensboro, North Carolina. Most of his novels deal with phases of the Reconstruction Period in the South. The best of these were: “A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools” (1879), doubtless his best known work, “Bricks Without Straw” (1880), and “The Invisible Empire” (1883). “Figs and Thistles” (1879) is a realistic story of early Ohio, in which the career of President Garfield is introduced; “Pactolus Prime” (1890) is the story of a Washington bootblack who has views on the negro problem. A man of strong opinions, Judge Tourgee could not write a novel which did not provoke thought; and he was by no means devoid of the true story-teller’s cunning.