A civilization that is as protective in its conservatism as are the ten-foot walls of brick with which its people surround their luxurious dwellings may be counted on to resent portrayal at short range, even though it were unequivocally eulogistic. That Mr. Cable is a most conscientious artist, and that he has been absolutely true to the letter as he saw it, there can be no question; but whether his technical excellences are always broadly representative or not is not so certain. That the writer who has so amply proven his own joy in the wealth of his material, should have been beguiled by its picturesqueness into a partisanship for the class making a special appeal, is not surprising. But truth in art is largely a matter of selection; and if Mr. Cable has sinned in the gleaning, it was undoubtedly because of visual limitation, rather than a conscious discrimination. In 'The Grandissimes,' his most ambitious work, we have an important contribution to representative literature. In the pleasant guise of his fascinating fiction he has essayed the history of a civilization, and in many respects the result is a great book. That such a work should attain its highest merit in impartial truth when taken as a whole, goes without saying. The dramatic story of Bras Coupé is true as belonging to the time and the situation. So is that of Palmyrea the Octoroon, or of Honoré Grandissime's "f. m. c." the half-brother, or of the pitiful voudou woman Clemence, the wretched old _marchande de calas_. Had he produced nothing more than his first small volume of seven tales, he would have made for himself an honored place in literature. As a collection, these stories are unrivaled for pictorial power and dramatic form, and are so nearly of equal merit that any one would be as representative in the popular mind as the one which is given here. "POSSON JONE'" From 'Old Creole Days': copyrighted 1879, 1881, 1883, by Charles Scribner's Sons To Jules St. Ange--elegant little heathen--there yet remained at manhood a remembrance of having been to school, and of having been taught by a stony-headed Capuchin that the world is round--for example, like a cheese. This round world is a cheese to be eaten through, and Jules had nibbled quite into his cheese-world already at twenty-two.