It is curious, however, that the theme of his writing has little in common with the virility of his style. As far as our Western point of view is concerned it is considered rather feminine than masculine to doubt the reality of our waking life and to give credence to dreams. Yet such is undoubtedly the preoccupation of Brussof in these stories. He says in his preface to the second edition of that collection which bears the title _The Axis of the Earth_, “the stories are written to show, in various ways, that there is no fixed boundary line between the world of reality and that of the imagination, between the dreaming and the waking world, life and fantasy; that what we commonly call ‘imaginary’ may be the greatest reality of the world, and that which all call reality the most dreadful delirium.” This volume, to which we have given the title of _The Republic of the Southern Cross_ contains the best of Brussof’s tales, and they all exemplify this particular attitude towards life. Six tales are taken from _The Axis of the Earth_, but “For Herself or Another” is taken from the volume entitled _Nights and Days_, and “Rhea Silvia” and “Eluli, son of Eluli,” from the book bearing the title of _Rhea Silvia_, in the Russian Universal Library. In Russia, as I have previously pointed out, the short story is considered of much more literary importance than it is here. It is the fashion to write short stories, and readers remember those they have read and refer to them, as we do to the distinctive and memorable poems on our intimate bookshelves. But, then, as a rule in Russia a short story must possess as its foundation some particular literary idea and conception. The story written for the sake of the story is almost unknown, and as a general rule the sort of love story and “love interest” so indispensable with us is not asked there. It often happens, therefore, that a volume of short tales makes a real and vital contribution to literature. I think possibly that these specimen volumes of Russian stories which I have edited from Sologub Kuprin and Brussof may be helpful in our own literary world as affording new conceptions, new models, and showing new possibilities of literary form. Brussof’s volume is an emotional study of reality and unreality cast in the form of brilliant tales. * * * * * “Rhea Silvia,” the longest and perhaps the best, tells of the dream which becomes reality in the Golden House of Nero which had been lost; the subterranean Rome where a Goth can meet a crazed girl who imagines she is the vestal Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus who founded Rome itself, and that the Goth, one of the barbarian destroyers of Rome, is the god Mars; the whole before and after intermingled. * * * * *