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here but one, to China merchant, for money enough to make me always a rich man. I don’t think I go back to Palawan. One pearl I save back, and send you with this letter, to remember by it Poljensio.”

That was what was in the package with the letter. The pearl he had saved; this one which I wear.

As I said in the first place, I am ready give it up when I can find a man who has a better claim to it than I have. My right of ownership in the gem is not, I confess, very substantial; but whose is it?

It was not the “Gobernadorcillo’s,” for he was only an agent; and besides that he left Palawan not long after I did, as I have found out by inquiry, and I cannot learn where he now is.

The Sultan of Sulu who reigned then is dead, and if the gem belonged to him it did not belong to his successor; for the friends of the first ruler declared that the man who gained the throne after him was a false claimant. Should I send it to the dead man’s heirs? He had no son, and one can hardly divide one pearl among four hundred widows.

Only Poljensio is left, and his claim, even if I could find him, I fear would be counted hardly legal. Quite likely he would not take it back, even if I found him; and sometimes, when I reflect upon what would probably have happened to me if the bag of stolen pearls had been found by any chance in my house, I am not sure that I should feel like offering the gem to him.

A Great American Novel of the Civil War.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH.

A Tale of North and South.

BY MARY HARRIOTT NORRIS,

Author of The Gray House of the Quarries, etc.

12mo, doth, decorative, with six full-page illustrations by H. T. Carpenter. $1.50

A really great American novel of the Civil War, which will appeal with equal force to-day to the Southern as well as to the Northern reader. The title is, of course, suggested by Mrs. Howe’s line,—

“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

The story is developed from the fortunes, amid the vicissitudes of war, of an old New Jersey family, one son of which had settled in Virginia, becoming a general in Lee’s army. There is little fighting and no cheap heroics in the book, but it gives a clearer picture and a more intimate and impressive understanding of what the great struggle really meant to Unionist and to Confederate alike than many a military history.

A Romance of the Iowa Wheat Fields.

THE ROAD TO RIDGEBY’S.

BY FRANK BURLINGAME HARRIS.

12mo, cloth, decorative. $1.50

A simple but powerful story of farm life in the great West, which cannot fail to make a lasting impression on every reader. In this book Mr. Harris has done for the wheat fields what Mr. Westcott has done for rural New York and Mr. Bacheller for the North country. It is in no way imitative of David Harum or Eben Holden; and, unlike each of these books, it is not in the portrayal of a single quaint character that its power consists. Mr. Harris has taken for his story a typical Iowa farmer’s family and their neighbours; and, although every one of the characters is realistically portrayed, the sense of proportion is never lost sight of, and the result is a picture of real life, artistic in the highest sense, as being true to nature. It is a wholesome story, full of the real heroism of homely life, a book to make the reader better by strengthening his belief in the truth of self-sacrifice and the survival of sturdy American character.

A Remarkable Study of Social Life in America.

DIFFERENCES

BY HERVEY WHITE.

12mo, cloth, decorative, 320 pages. $1.50

“It is treating the poor as a class and employing any method of handling them that I object to.... Why can’t they be treated as individuals, the same as other people? What would the rich think of my impertinence if I went about the world treating them in a peculiar manner,—as if they were not real people, at all, but only ‘the rich,’ in my knowledge? ”—Hester Carr, in Differences.

Difference is an extraordinary book.... The labor question is its primary concern, and the caste barrier which modern conditions have erected between the man who works and the man who merely lives. This is no new theme, yet Differences is new, and its place in thoughtful literature awaits it. The only argument presented by Mr. White is contained in the picture he spreads before us. It is real, and set out with bold, firm strokes, and there is no attempt to be merely artistic. Genevieve Radcliffe, the rich society girl, who goes to work charity with the poor, and John Wade, the workman, whose situation involves all the tragedy of metropolitan poverty, are human, if they be not typical. They embody the ‘differences’, and, if they do not point the way to equality, it is because American civilization is not yet ripe for them. Withal, the book is not a tract. It is worth a thousand such. Informed throughout with a tender simplicity, a sense of the beauty of common things, and a sincerity that brooks no question, it carries equal appeal to the student of economics and to the lover of human feeling.”—Philadelphia North American.

“There is no end of philosophy in books about the poor and how to reach them and send rays of sunshine into their world; but few books get at the real ‘Differences’ that exist between the wealthy classes and the poor as does Mr. Hervey White.... Difference is vitally interesting, both as a story and as a moral lesson.... It is written with wholesome enthusiasm and an intelligent survey of real facts.”—Boston Herald.

“The method employed by Mr. Hervey White in Differences is not like that of any author I have ever read in the English language. It resembles strongly the work of the best Russian novelists, it seems to me, and particularly that of Dostolevsky, and yet it is in no sense an imitation of those writers: it is apparently like them merely because the author’s motives and ways of thought and observation are like them.... I have never before read any such treatment in the English language of the life and thought of laboring people.”—Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, in Boston Transcript.

A Powerful Realistic Novel of American Life.

QUICKSAND

By HERVEY WHITE.

12mo, cloth, decorative, 328 pages. $1.50

Quicksand is a strong argument against a certain condition which the author believes exists too generally in American society, and is, in effect, an appeal for the freedom of the individual in family life. It is a powerful tragedy, developing very naturally out of the effects of the interference of parents in the lives of their children, and of brothers and sisters in the affairs of each other. It becomes therefore, not only the story of an individual, but the life history of an entire family, the members of which are portrayed with astonishing vividness and realism. The hero of the book also illustrates, in his sufferings and failures, the unfortunate effects of a too narrow orthodoxy in religion, coupled with his family’s interference with his growth out of this environment. Offsetting the tragedy of the story is “Hiram,” the “hired man” of the family in its earlier New England days, in whom, particularly, the reader’s interest will centre. Patient, kindly, faithful, and uncomplaining, he is indeed the real “hero” of the tale, the only one free from the unfortunate environments of the other characters, yet forced indirectly to suffer also because of them. It is the every-day life of the every-day family that is drawn; and this fact, together with the boldness and fidelity of the drawing, gives the story its power and impressiveness.

“Hervey White is the most forceful writer who has appeared in America for a long generation.”—Chicago Evening Post.

“We cannot remember another book in which lives, thoughts, emotions, souls, and principles of action have been analyzed with such convincing power. Mr. Hervey White has great literary skill. He has here made his mark, and he has come to stay.... He is the American George Gissing, and as such some day he will have to be taken into account.”—Boston Herald.

“It should insure Mr. White a permanent place in the critical regard of his fellow-countrymen.... Few characters as strong as that of Elizabeth Hinckley have ever been drawn by an American author, and she will remain in the mind of the most assiduous novel reader, secure of a place far above that held by most of the puny creations of the day.”—Chicago Tribune.

“It is wrought of enduring qualities. Few novels are so sustained on an elevated plane of interest.”—Philadelphia Item.

“It is a novel that takes hold of one, and is not the sort of book that, once begun, can be laid down without being finished.”—Indianapolis News.

Two Notable Novels by Emma Rayner.

VISITING THE SIN

A Tale of Mountain Life In Kentucky and Tennessee.

12mo, cloth, with cover designed by T. W. Ball. 448 pages. $1.50

The struggle between the heroine’s love and her determination to visit the sin upon the son of the supposed murderer of her father forms the basis of the story. All of the characters are vividly drawn, and the action of the story is wonderfully dramatic and lifelike. The period is about 1875.

“A powerful, well-sustained story, the interest in which does not flag from the first chapter to the last.”—Philadelphia North American.

“Unusually powerful. The dramatic plot is intricate, but not obscure.”—The Congregationalist.

“A graphic and readable piece of fiction, which will stand with the best of its time concerning humble American characters.”—Providence Journal.

“Far ahead of most of these latter-day Southern novels.”—Southern Star.

“The people in the story are persistently real.”—Christian Advocate.

FREE TO SERVE

A Tale of Colonial New York.

12mo, cloth, with a cover designed by Maxfield Parrish. 434 pages. $1.50

“One of the very best stories of the Colonial period yet written,”—Philadelphia Bulletin.

“We have here a thorough-going romance of American life in the first days of the eighteenth century. It is a story written for the story’s sake, and right well written, too. Indians, Dutch, Frenchmen, Puritans, all play a part. The scenes are vivid, the incidents novel and many.”—The Independent.

“The writing is cleverly done, and the old-fashioned atmosphere of old Knickerbocker days is reproduced with such a touch of verity as to seem an actual chronicle recorded by one who lived in those days.”—Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia.

“The supreme test of a long book is the reading of it, and when one reaches the end of Free to Serve, he acknowledges freely that it is the best book that he has taken up for a long time,”—Boston Herald.

An Irish Love Story of 1848.

MONONIA.

BY JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P.,

Author of A History of Our Own Times, Dear Lady Disdain, etc. 12mo, green cloth and gold. $1.50

Mr. McCarthy has written several successful novels; but none, perhaps, will have greater interest for his American readers than this volume, in which he writes reminiscently of the Ireland of his youth and the stirring events which marked that period. It is pre-eminently an old-fashioned novel, befitting the times which it describes, and written with the delicate touch of sentiment characteristic of Mr. McCarthy’s fiction. The book takes its name from the heroine, a charming type of the gentle-born Irish-woman. In the development of the romance, the attempts for Ireland’s freedom, and the dire failures that culminated at Ballingary, are told in a manner which give an intimate insight into the history

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