No person of superficial temperament could have described with so much humor Van Bibber's attempt to practice economy, or could have given us the affecting conclusion of "Princess Aline," or could have written many paragraphs of "The Exiles." No sympathetic human being who has ever read "The Exiles" will forget the picture of the outlawed boodle alderman in Tangier, saying to a visitor about to return to New York with a clean conscience and a strong hunger to see the familiar sights: "'I'll tell you what you _can_ do for me, Holcombe. Some night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed. Lally's; just for luck. Will you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding into Pastor's, on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L-cars running by on the other. That's a gay sight, ain't it now? With all the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalks crowded. One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their hands. That's great, isn't it? Well,' he laughed and shook his head, 'I'll be back there some day, won't I,' he said, wistfully, 'and hear it for myself?'" It would be hard to find in fiction a more affecting picture done with fewer strokes and with closer fidelity to human nature. It is a picture which must strike the attentive reader, and particularly the attentive New York reader, full on the heart strings. Mr. Davis has the habit of looking at the odd things in life. Without this habit no man can be a first-class reporter; and our author has proved himself a first-class reporter in many parts of the world and for many papers. Like every well-trained reporter, Mr. Davis is continually "seeing things." As he said to his friend Mr. Sangree, some months ago: "I never walk one city block that I do not see twenty things to interest me. I tire my friends sometimes by pointing them out. Their minds run in different channels. But this ability to see things is my greatest joy in life, incidentally my living. I cultivated it when I began reporting, and to this day if I see a man turn in a car to look out the window I unconsciously turn with him. He may have observed something that escaped me--something that contains an element of human interest, and I hold no effort wasted that may add to this general cargo of life's impressions." No able reporter could have worked long under Charles A. Dana and escaped the objective habit. In fact, a story which Mr. Sangree tells of his friend's experience on _The Evening Sun_ illustrates the point.