I am sorry that Anthony Hope has married off the Princess Osra. She was a delightful old maid, and now that she’s the Countess of Mittenheim her story’s done. For Anthony Hope is a romanticist, not a veritist, and therefore tells the truth about the most vital thing in life, which is the soul of romance. That most vital fact is that there is virtue in true lovers and marriage is not a failure with people who are good enough for chivalry. So there will be no more adventures for the charming princess who has so strong a mind and so warm a heart that she might stand as the type of the new woman. She has found the port and happy haven of her life. Thanks to the breezy narrator of her voyages. But how we shall miss the bluff monarch who has that rare accompaniment of power—a sense of humor. Let us petition the court chronicler of Zenda for a partial remission of sentence. Let us have the merry Rudolf and his boys for awhile, though the star of his kingdom has gone out. * * * * * Sixty-nine applications for stock have reached the Combined Press from Cluett, Coon & Company’s employees alone. * * * * * To gentlemen about to make presents to bookish ladies I commend that most charming thing, _The Female Offender_, by my esteemed co-worker in the vineyard, C. Lombroso. * * * * * I don’t know whether the following headlines, taken from a recent number of _Footlights_, are ironical or sarcastic, but to a man whose memory extends back to the thirties they seem curious: THE NEW WOMAN—Fay Templeton. * * * * * “Every Man His Own Nordau” is the theme of the word-builder in the _Scribner’s_ foreground study this month. “Degeneration While You Wait” is the motto of the retrospectives who read Grant _et al_ in the Buddhist’s Own. * * * * * Possibly Mr. Pullman is _not_ a praying man, and perhaps he merely accepted “the Universalist compromise with Infidelity,” as that staunch Calvinist, Russell Sage, who gives $25,000 yearly to Foreign Missions, avers; yet Mr. Pullman has not lost all sense of piety, for he “lifts the collection” religiously in five thousand Palace Cars every morning. * * * * * A Richmond, Virginia, publishing house is out with a history of the United States, and from the advance notices it ought to have a good sale in the land of reconstruction. All the notices are from the land of cotton. The Houston _Post_ says it sets forth the heroic struggles “for self government and the sovereignty of the States.” I haven’t seen any reviews from north of Mason and Dixon’s line, but the New York _Tribune_ ought to give the book a handsome send off, and if the _Tribune_ neglects it, why there’s the Cleveland _Leader_ or La Monte G. Raymond’s Allegany _Republican_. * * * * *