Many people of discernment found pleasure in our Richard Carvels, Janice Merediths, and Hugh Wynnes. Miss Johnston’s _To Have and to Hold_ and _Lewis Rand_ are books one may enjoy without shame. The stickler for style need not be scornful of Mrs. Catherwood’s _Lazarre_ and _The Romance of Dollard_. Out of Chicago came Mr. Henry Fuller’s charming exotic, _The Chevalier of Piensieri-Vani_. _Monsieur Beaucaire_ and Miss Sherwood’s _Daphne_ proved a while ago that all the cherries have not been shaken from the tree--only the trees in these cases, unfortunately, were not American. Surely one of these days a new Peter Pan will fly over an American greenwood. I should bless the hand that pressed upon me for reading to-night so diverting a skit as Mr. Vielé’s _The Inn of the Silver Moon_. I shall not even pause to argue with those who are plucking my coat-tails and whispering that these are mere trifles, too frivolous to be mentioned when the novel is the regular order of the conference. I am looking along the shelf for Stockton, the fanciful and whimsical. How pleasant it would be to meet Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine again, or to lodge for a day at another Squirrel Inn. And yet (O fame, thou fickle one!) when I asked a young lady the other day if she knew Stockton, she replied with emphasis that she did not; that “that old quaint stuff doesn’t go any more!” Having handed Realism a ticket to Pittsburgh with generous stop-over privileges, I regret that I am unable to point Romance to any such promising terminus. But the realm of Romance is extra-territorial; Realism alone demands the surveyor’s certificate and abstracts of title. An Irish poet once assured me that fairies are to be found everywhere, and surely somewhere between Moosehead Lake and Puget Sound some lad is piping lustily on a new silver whistle where the deer come down to drink. IV