Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/183

 ory of his past greatness, living over again Jena, Wagram, Waterloo and Austerlitz, one may imagine Bismarck watching from afar the political arena and longing to be again at the helm, setting his course for the nation. And in telling this his own story, Bismarck is once again in the strife, he lives in the old time fighting days, and while in the old library at Friedrichsruh he dictated this wonderful biography to Lothar — ucher, the fire and vival picturesque- ness of his words prove beyond a doubt that the old statesman, in spirit at least, was living again in the days when he had at last realized his ambition, when France was crushed and Germany united.

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The announcement of a new novel by H. G. Wells, the far-famed author of "The War of the Worlds," will be of

interest to a large portion of the reading world that took pleasure in that ececntric, fantastic, and delightfully im- possible flight of fancy. This new novel is entitled "When the Sleeper Wakes/' and is to appear as a serial in Harper's Weekly during 1899. j» Herbert Bashford, whose poems have already won a degree of recognition from an appreciative public, has produced through Whitaker & Ray, of San Fran-

cisco, a volume, of vefse, "Songs of the Puget Sea," that is attractive in appear- ance. It is a dainty little book in white and green and gold, and the type is clear and the paper all that it should be. Of the quartrains that make up the latter half of the volume the best is this:

"When dashing, gallant Custer fell he gave The world a shining name Time cannot dim;

He was a soldier so intensely brave That even Courage paled to follow him."

There is another, "A Sea Picture," that is faultless. "The Derelict" is the one poem of the many that is not marred by a false note :

"Men come not nigh when they pass me by,

For they fear me, everyone, As I cleave the gray of the dawning day

Or drowse, in the summer sun.

Past unknown isles, for miles and miles

I wander away to where The iceberg lifts and the salt spray drifts

In the freezing Arctic air.

I steal by the bars when the flame-winged stars Have swarmed in the upper blue, And the glow and shine of the drenching brine Like the white fire burns me through.

I haunt as a ghost the rock-girt coast Where the bell-bouy loudly rings

And the breakers leap to the mighty sweep Of the night wind's sable wings."

Mr. Bashford has an unhappy way of marring his work by inartistic touches. His verses, with a few exceptions, are like pictures that are spoiled by an awk- ward stroke of the brush at the finish.

Beautiful things come out of the South besides magnolia blossoms and George W. Cable's Creole stories, and not the least beautiful that has appeared during the year just closed is Howard Weeden's "Shadows on the Wall," a volume of negro portraits and verse dedicated to "The Absent." The black faces that ac- company each little poem are drawn from life by one who knows and loves and understands her subjects. We are so accustomed to seeing the negro carica- tured that these countenances, tender, sad, or rollicking with fun, as the case may be, are a revelation.