_Mary Hallock Foote._--Born at Milton-on-the-Hudson, New York, in 1847, Mary Hallock early showed artistic talent and at sixteen began to study design in Cooper Institute, New York City. She was married in 1876 to Arthur D. Foote, a California mining engineer, and travelled extensively in the Southwest. Her varied experiences have been utilised with marked literary skill in a series of stories, the first of which was “The Led Horse Claim” (1883), in which the story of Romeo and Juliet was repeated in a California mining camp, though with a happy ending. “The Chosen Valley” (1892) is a study in contrasts, recounting an episode in the reclaiming by irrigation of the waste lands of the West. In 1894 appeared “Cœur d’Alene,” a love-story with a background in the labour troubles. She has also written “John Bowdoin’s Testimony” (1886), “The Last Assembly Ball” (1889), “In Exile” (1894), and “The Cup of Trembling” (1895). Her latest stories, “The Desert and the Sown” (1902), a study of ideal self-sacrifice, and “A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories” (1903), are hardly up to the level of her earlier work, which, in its vivid representation of wild Western life, entitles her to a place with Bret Harte. _Wolcott Balestier._--The promise of the too short life of Charles Wolcott Balestier (1861-91) deserves record. He was born at Rochester, New York, studied at Cornell University and the University of Virginia, and became first the editor of _Tid-Bits_ and then the junior partner of Heinemann & Balestier, publishers of _The English Library_, an attempt to popularise British and American books on the Continent. His interest in literature was intense, and that he would have produced stories worth remembering, doubtless in the vein of Mr. Howells, whom he greatly admired, is evidenced by his few published works: “A Patent Philtre” (1884), “A Fair Device” (1884), “A Victorious Defeat” (1886), “A Common Story” (1891), “The Average Woman” (1892), three stories, with a memorial note by Henry James, and “Benefits Forgot” (1891), first published serially in _The Century_. With Mr. Kipling, his brother-in-law, he collaborated in “The Naulahka” (1892). _Robert Grant._--Born in Boston (1852), Robert Grant graduated from Harvard in 1873 and became Ph.D. in 1876 and LL.B. in 1879. He has followed law and letters side by side. In 1893 he was appointed Judge of the Probate Court and the Court of Insolvency for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. He has written, among other things, “The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl” (1880), “An Average Man” (1884), “The Knave of Hearts” (1886), “The Reflections of a Married Man” (1892), “The Opinions of a Philosopher” (1893), “The Bachelor’s Christmas, and Other Stories” (1895), and “Unleavened Bread” (1900), his best known and most powerful story. Mr. Grant is a trenchant satirist of the foibles of certain aspirants to social prominence. Selma, in “Unleavened Bread,” is a veritable incarnation of ignoble social ambition.