VOL. XXI.

am, under some shadie tree,

F. Hopkinson Smith.

AT 150 East 34th Street, New York, is a house filled with interesting curios, pictures, tapestry, pottery, etc. This for twenty years has been the home of a man who spends his life in the pursuit of three professions: engineering, art, literature. As the senior member of the firm of Francis H. Smith he builds lighthouses, sea-walls, submarine foundations, etc., while many charming water-colors of Venice, Holland, and Constantinople, as well as his novels and short stories, bear the individual name of F. Hopkinson Smith. To these various occupations he added, in the past year or two, lecturing on art and literature and reading from his books.

Born in Baltimore sixty years ago, of good old Virginia stock, F. Hopkinson Smith, at the age of fifteen, attended a preparatory school in the Oriole City intending to enter Princeton. But a year before carrying out his plan, reverses in his father's business changed the course of his whole life. At sixteen he was shipping clerk in a hardware store at fifty dollars a year. Two years later he became assistant superintendent in a Baltimore iron foundry owned by

his brother. Then the war broke out, and the big foundry closed its doors. The young man's prospects were gloomy enough when he came to New York in 1862. For a long time he sought work in vain, but finally his luck turned, and he was offered a position by a friend of his family in an iron business on Broad Street. It was while here that he made up his mind, at twenty-five, to become an engineer, and started at the work in earnest, and at the bottom, too. After a while he got into contract work for himself, and associated with him in business his present partner, James Symington, who is also an artist. Four years later he undertook his first engineering contract, the construction of the stone ice-breaker around the Bridgeport Lighthouse. Then came the Block Island breakwaters, the jetties at the mouth of the Connecticut River, the Governor's Island sea-wall, the foundation of the Statue of Liberty, the Race Rock Lighthouse at New London, and many other similar works. When once asked which of his achievements gave him the most satisfaction, Mr. Smith answered: "The Race Rock Lighthouse."

His taste for art seems to have been inherited. His great-grandfather, Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was an amateur in water-colors; his great-uncle Judge Joseph Hopkinson, was the first presi. dent of the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and also an amateur painter.

Mr. Smith began to paint when a boy, and although his art-work has been done mainly in the intervals of a busy life, he has attained to the first rank among American painters in water-colors.

At forty-five Mr. Smith had written nothing for print. At that time his publisher wished him to furnish letter-press to accompany each picture in a series of water-colors which were at first designed simply as a series of plates illustrating picturesque bits in various parts of the world where he had travelled. He wrote for these some stories or descriptions, and the result was his first book, "Well-Worn Roads." In Mr. Smith's own words: "My first story I called The Church of San Pablo.' I sent it to my publisher and awaited his verdict, feeling sure he would throw it into the waste-basket. He disappointed me by telegraphing: 'Good stuff. Keep it up.' I took his advice, and that is how I stumbled into literature."

It is but just to add that "Well-Worn Roads" was successful from the outset. It was not, however, until the publication of "Colonel Carter of Cartersville" that he became a prominent figure in the literary world. This story, describing the adventures of an old-fashioned Virginian affectionate, effusive, unworldly, with a high sense of honor-who finds himself stranded, as it were, among the breakers of business life in New York, is generally recognized as a masterpiece in the delineation of

Courtesy of The Fleming H. Revell Co.

DR. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

character, with fine, subtle strokes, and has an exquisite blending of pathos and humor.

44

Since these earlier efforts Mr. Smith has published through Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company a long list of very popular novels and stories, such as "Tom Grogan," Gondola Days," etc., his "Caleb West, Master Diver," published in the spring of 1898, being his most successful book.

Every year Mr. Smith takes a vacation of three months, and goes directly to Venice, where he has been spending his summers for many seasons. But Venice is not the only city that has known Mr. Smith; he has lived in Constantinople, Spain, Holland, and his friends among officials, diplomats, and natives of those lands over the sea are scarcely less numerous than his many friends in America.

In the midst of all these varied activities, fancy a man of medium height, erect, wellknit and muscular, alert in his movements, with iron-gray hair, gray military mustaches, looking, at the first glance, like an army officer. When he speaks, however, this illusion vanishes, for his voice has the peculiar ring, and his gestures have the illustrative significance, acquired to the full by no one but the American lecturer. The man impresses one as having enormous physical and intellectual powers, with which are blended the fine sensibilities of a woman, and a delicacy of fancy and sentiment rarely found in one personality. It is this same combination of qualities in his pictures and writings that has won for him a unique place in the world of art and letters.

Great Books as Life-Teachers.

DR. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS treats under this one title, "Great Books as Life Teachers," his studies on Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture," George Eliot's "Tito," Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," and Browning's "Saul." To these are added other studies, derived from the most recent biographies. In his preface Dr. Hillis writes that he leaves to others the problem of literary criticism, but that his object is to "emphasize the importance of right thinking and character," and to direct readers to those books which are "the aids and incentives to the high Christian life." It is impossible not to recognize the fact that while fiction is increasing, the writers of romances play as important a part in shaping morals as do the poets and essayists. Dr. Hillis's reputation as a clergyman is well established. But theological study alone does not preclude him from traversing other grounds, and his many-sidedness is shown in the appreciation of the diverse subjects found in this volume. (Revell. $1.50.)-N. Y. Times Book Review.

Twenty Famous Naval Battles. PROFESSOR RAWSON, who writes U. S. N. after his name, and fills the office of Superintendent of Naval War Records, taking Creasy's "Decisive Battles" as a model, has written a useful compendium of naval history under the title of "Twenty Famous Naval Battles," beginning

with Salamis and ending with Santiago. Actium is

the only other naval combat of classical times which is included in the score, the work then leaping to Lep

anto, in Oc

tober, 1571.

The defeat of the Spanish Arma

da, the bat

tles of the Nile and of Trafalgar, of Lake Erie, of the Monitor and the Merrimac, of the Kearsarge and the Alabama, and of Mobile Bay, are the subjects of the more important chapters in

From "Twenty Famous Naval Battles."

received in action. Materials are thus supplied for scientific study as well as for the historical reader, and the portraits of famous naval officers and pictures of actions add much to the attractiveness of the two volumes. They are well printed and well bound, and should find a place in every public library. (Crowell. 2 v. $4.) - Boston Literary World.

Copyright, 1899, by T. Y. Crowell & Co.

the body of the work. We miss the great and decisive battle of the Yalu, 1894, in which the Japanese navy inflicted so crushing a defeat upon the Chinese, and which certainly deserved to be included in the field of view. The treatment of Manila and Santiago is fresh and full. It will be noticed that the author, while generous in his award of praise to all officers concerned in the second of these two combats, does not hesitate to give to Admiral Sampson the foremost honors which he deserves. The work is handsomely illustrated, and of special value are the plans of battles, and the sectional views of battleships, showing wounds

England Saved Eu

rope," by

W. H. Fitchett, who proposes in this and three fu

ture volumes to tell the "Story of the Great

War, 17931815;' in other words. to relate the history of Ormurzd, as embodied in whatever was

distinctly and benefi

Mr. Fitchett possesses many of the qualifications which this task, as he conceives it, demands. In the first place he has sufficiently mastered the various histories of his subject to understand it as a whole, and to reproduce it in its entirety, not from the historical point of view, with its speculations and subtleties, but from the point of view of the story-teller, clearly, directly, positively, and popularly. He has arrived at the truth of things, through much reading, of which he says nothing, and he relates it without hesitation, and as tersely as possible, in chapters which are masterly specimens of simple English. (Scribner. Pt. I. $2.)-Mail ana Express.

To-morrow in Cuba.

IT is a useful book which Messrs. Harper Brothers have given us in "To-morrow in Cuba," by Charles M. Pepper. The author went to Cuba as a newspaper correspondent in the spring of 1897, and what he here sets forth is the outcome of observations prolonged through more than two years. He disclaims any purpose of supporting preconceived opinions or of defending any special policy. It is his aim to recount facts, to furnish exact information in the light of which may be considered not only the political questions, but the social and economic problems by which Cuba is confronted. We may say at once that his conviction is that

THE FALL OF MONTCALM.

Cuban problems cannot

be settled from above or without. They must be Isolved, if at all, from within. If it be said "Cuba is made, but who shall make the Cubans?" the reply here given is, "Themselves." But under what conditions? That is the question to which the whole volume is the answer. In the earlier chapters of the book Mr. Pepper narrates the history of Cuba from the beginning of the ten years' war to the evacuation of the island by General Blanco. In subsequent chapters the distinction of race or color are discussed; the part which has been played by immigration and colonization, especially on the part of Spain; the principal natural products of the island; the actual and prospective conditions of trade and taxation; the present state of religion and the relations of the provinces to one another, the latter matter important for its bearing on the question whether a federal or a unified republic would be better adapted to Cuba. The Harpers have furnished several books on Cuba during the year. ($2.)-The Sun.