Samaroff is not to be blamed, individually; although what she represents is not an art, but a menace, for it is always applauded, copied, and taught to the youth. Sonority and power in tone-masses are never obtained by blows upon the piano-keys, or by waving the arms over the head. The piano is capable of infinite shading and many kinds of tone, from mighty chords and fierce tumult to delicate tonal weavings and vague states of calm, from crystalline brilliance to low-sung intimate melodies; and there are certain artists now living who listen closely, hear these strange secrets, and bring them out for other ears. Olga Samaroff, apparently, like her Chicago audience, is aware chiefly of the difference between loud and soft. HERMAN SCHUCHERT. Book Discussion A Peter Pan Lover _Young Earnest, by Gilbert Cannan._ [_D. Appleton and Company, New York_] A man “who is submissive to his emotions is not in power over himself”—so wrote Spinoza; and such a man is René Fourmy, the Peter Pan lover of Gilbert Cannan’s latest novel, who never grew up into the fact that he should not have everything he wanted. After a boyhood and youth of almost unconscious surrender to environment, he suddenly rebelled against the pretense that surrounded him and gave himself up as completely to his emotions as he had hitherto yielded himself to external circumstances. He had been educated to be a professor and had married an ambitious girl without having awakened to the meaning of life, love, or passion. His first great disillusionment came with his honeymoon, when instead of finding in his bride “the new wonders and sweet joy” of fulfilled love, they together “attained nothing but heat, hunger, and distress.”