Judging from “The Story of a Bad Boy,” which is partly autobiographical, Thomas Bailey Aldrich spent his boyhood just as all wholesome-minded, healthy boys do, in having a good time. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 11, 1836. While he was still a baby, his family went to New Orleans, but he was sent back to his native town to be educated. After a common school course, he prepared to enter Harvard, but his father failed in business and soon afterward died. Although young Aldrich’s relatives were prepared to pay the expenses of his college course, he preferred to be independent and decided to begin a business career. So it came about that he entered the offices of his uncle in New York city at the age of sixteen. About this time he began to contribute articles in prose and verse to Putnam’s Magazine, The Knickerbocker Magazine and other periodicals. His literary ability finally got him a place in a publishing house as reader of manuscripts and of proof. His first book, The Bells, did not attract much attention, but in 1856 he published The Ballad of Baby Bell and Other Poems, which struck the popular fancy. About the year 1860 he became an independent writer, contributing to various publications, but chiefly to the Atlantic Monthly. In 1870 he became editor of Every Saturday, a high-class literary weekly, which was founded in Boston and effectively edited, yet only lived four years. In 1881 he succeeded Mr. Howells in the editorial chair of the Atlantic Monthly. In this same year both Mr. Howells and Mr. Aldrich received from Yale university the degree of LL.D. Mr. Aldrich retired from the Atlantic Monthly in 1890. In 1865 he was married to Miss Lillian Woodman, of New York city. Several children were born to him. BLISS CARMAN. Bliss Carman is a native of New Brunswick and began life as a civil engineer and school teacher. The muse won him, however, almost from boyhood, and he has written steadily, slowly and safely, which is equivalent to saying that he has written progressively. Like many of the Canadian writers, he came to the United States to seek recognition. Here he met three other Canadians—C. G. D. Roberts, James Clarence Harvey and the late Richard Hovey. They formed a talented quartet of struggling poets, and their little world known as “Vagabondia,” was one of the most fascinating centers of American Bohemianism of the better type. Literary and artistic people coveted the privilege of entering therein. Mr. Carman and Mr. Hovey published several volumes of songs from “Vagabondia.” The subject of this sketch is best known by his Coronation Ode and his Sapphic Fragments. There is a fine and tender quality in Mr. Carman’s poems that accounts for their popularity among people possessing that which is known as the “artistic temperament.” RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.