The majority of these "songs" deal with the lives of the working man, the day laborer who builds our houses and our railroads, works in the mine and the ditch. The author has lived this life and writes of it with power and feeling. He has grasped the wider meaning of it all, made plain the essential nobility of labor, the heroism and idealism of many of these men. In short, he has done in verse for the working man what Constant Meunier did in bronze. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. By Van Wick Brooks, author of "The Wine of the Puritans." Frontispiece. $1.50 net. One of the more important biographies of the year, and yet it is more than a mere biography, for Mr. Brooks attempts to place Symonds in relation to the literary world of his own day and of the present. He builds up a clear picture of Symonds' life, from early days to the end. His book is uncrowded but not deficient, clear and unsluggish but not too rapid. In short, it is itself literature. THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. By James Hinton, author of "Life in Nature," "The Place of the Physician," etc., etc. $1.00 net. This little book is a classic. It deals with pain in its necessary, beneficial aspect. Hinton addressed it to the sorrowful, to whom it assuredly brings comfort, but it will prove interesting and helpful to all thinking men and women. It shows how pain, if it could be recognized as development, and in a sense as joy, would be as much welcomed as pleasure is now. We are afraid of both, instead of recognizing them as two parts of the development of the soul; neither is good alone, but as a completion the one of the other. THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF A PLAY. By Louis Shipman. Illustrated in colors and in black and white. $1.50 net. Perhaps you remember Henry Miller in "D'Arcy of the Guards." Its author, Louis Shipman, has written this unique book about "D'Arcy," in which he tells exactly what happened to the play from the very first moment the manuscript left his hands. Letters, contracts, telegrams, etc., are all given in full, and there are many interesting illustrations, both in color and in black and white. "The True Adventures of a Play" will prove of almost inestimable value to all those who practise or hope to practise the art of playwriting; and it abounds, furthermore, in bits of fine criticism of the contemporary theatre. NOVA HIBERNIA. By Michael Monahan, author of "Adventures in Life and Letters." $1.50 net. A book of delightful and informing essays about Irishmen and letters by an Irishman. Some of the chapters are "Yeats and Synge," "Thomas Moore," "Sheridan," "Irish Balladry," etc., etc.