"One of the autobiographies that will live long and be ever new." - Pittsburgh Gazette Times. "It is a notable piece of autobiographic writing - the story of an unusually interesting boyhood and youth told with an energy and an eye for the diverting and significant that distinguish it at once from the slipshod garrulity of most books of the kind. One may open the volume at any page and be confident of striking either a passage of extraordinarily vivid description or an entertaining episode that closes with a curious solemnizing effect." -The Nation. "A rare autobiography that will add a permanent charm to American letters. It is a simple story of a boyhood spent in Scotland and on a homestead on the Wisconsin frontier, but it is told with so much gentleness and good humor that the reader is sorry when the last page is reached." Portland (Ore.) Telegram. "There is a freshness and truth and simple sincerity about it that go far toward making it one of the great pieces of writing of its kind. It clears the brain and braces the system to read so genuine, unpretentious, homely, and convincing a bit of autobiography. Sweet are the uses of adversity when it can shape such a life as is so unassumingly portrayed in Mr. Muir's pages. No one, having once opened the book, can lay it down unfinished; and no one, having finished it, can fail to feel himself the better for it." The Dial. 1 Boston HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY New York On the eve of going to press with the fifth edition of this book, published in September, 1903, it seems only just to its merits that the discriminating reading public should be made aware of the friendships it has formed during the ten years of its lifetime. The vivacity, humor and grace of the stories give the book a secure place in the literature of entertainment. The title story of "Zut" is a veritable gem that deserves inclusion in every anthology wherein the cat plays a part. Zut was "a white angora of surpassing beauty and prodigious size" who brought about the great gulf that became fixed between the proprietors of the Épicerie and of the Salle de Coiffure standing side by side on the Avenue de la Grande Armée. The friendship of years was destroyed, but "Zut sits smiling in Jean-Baptiste's doorway and cares naught for anything in the world save the sunlight and her midday meal." From a number of letters shown the publishers from time to time, the following passages have been selected: "Your recommendation of 'Zut' is quite sufficient to establish your reputation as a literary gastronome of more than ordinarily delicate taste for subtle 'flavors.' I am going to get and send four copies to those who know the Latin Quarter as it really is, with an extra copy for myself." "I have been back to my old haunts in Paris since I have seen you-without leaving my chair. I never have read any stories quite so charmingly French in spirit and style. The author must have been thoroughly 'Parisianized.'" "Many thanks for the charming book you were so kind as to send me. I began it last night and I could hardly make up my mind to go to bed, so vividly did the sketches bring back that beautiful city to me. Every page is filled with Gallic wit and esprit." "The title story in particular delighted us and we are indeed pleased to have made the acquaintance of that lovely if fickle and, I fear, not entirely moral animal. 'Zut' is being reserved for the table of the best guest room in our new house where I hope it makes more friends." A New Honor for the Author of "Queed" and "V. V.'s Eyes" Among the honorary degrees conferred by Columbia University at its recent Commencement was that of Master of Arts given to Henry Sydne: Harrison. Suffrage in the Middle West Willa Sibert Cather is an ardent feminist. I: "O Pioneers!" her new story of the Swedes and Bohemians of the Middle West, she maintains the argument that only weak and unsuccessful mer resent achievement in women. Miss Cather especially proud of her Swedish friends for thei: attitude on suffrage. Absorbed as they have beer in the enormous task of opening up a new country and adapting themselves to new customs and . strange government, they have kept, neverthe less, a wide horizon. Suffrage workers from the east report that among these people there is n work to be done. These women of Swedish birth or descent are keenly and intelligently intereste in the questions of the day and ready, when the time comes, to support their opinions with thei votes. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Has your typist got the pounding habit? Does she tire herself out-and wear the ma- A sure cure for this habit is the typewriter which requires No POUNDING -the LIGHT MONARCH TOUCH THE light, elastic touch of the Monarch makes the machine last longer. It also makes the operator last longer. Release from fatigue means a better day's work and more of them -day after day -year after year. No Thus employer and operator both Monarch Department (Incorporated) New York and Everywhere SPECIAL OFFER A trial subscription for three months will be sent to new sub For particulars address the Atlantic Monthly Com-scribers on receipt of fifty cents. 35 cents a copy. $4.00 a year pany, 4 Park St., Boston, Mass. 4 Park St. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS WHO TRAVEL If you wish your address changed, send us old and new address. Instructions HAVE THE ATLANTIC WHEREVER YOU GO Boston Contributors to the July Cornelia A. P. Comer ("Intensive Living") is an Atlantic author thrice familiar to our readers through her "Letter to the Rising Generation," "The Preliminaries," and "The Vanishing Lady." The present paper is, to borrow the words from a letter of the author's, "an attempt to express certainties of the intuition under formulæ of the intellect more or less. That kind of a synthesis must be more or less impossible in its nature. I call it in this instance a presentable explanation of a regrettable hypothesis." The explanation we commend to our readers. Samuel O. Dunn ("Wanted: a Commission on Railroad Accidents") is the editor of The Railway Age Gazette and a close student of the subject of which he writes. The name of the author of "A Confession in Prose" is known to readers of the better magazines the country over. Winifred Kirkland (“The Noble Army") is an old friend of the Atlantic's, to which she has contributed many poems and stories. Henry Dwight Sedgwick ("The Classics Again") is an essayist and historian who has of late years specialized on the history of Italy, as his "A Short History of Italy" and his recent larger work, "Italy in the Thirteenth Century" testify. Ellen Key (“Education for Motherhood") is a Swedish writer whose followers are spread throughout Europe and whose influence is beginning to gain a hold upon this continent. The chief article of her creed, which she has upheld with a passionate and beautiful earnestness, is the right of the individual to personal opinion and to personal development. This she has preached in varying forms with unvarying eloquence. Her bestknown books, "The Century of the Child," "The Education of the Child," and "Love and Marriage" are published in this country by the Putnams. Contrary as are many of her beliefs to the accepted social code of to-day, she herself, as Havelock Ellis says, is a woman whose personality is one of the chief moral forces of our time. Her diversions are, as she characteristically says in "Who's Who," "nature, music, books, friends, art." |