Literary Notes

Helen Gardener, the author of "Is This Yuur Son, My Lord?" corrects the impression that would naturally follow the reading of her frank story, that it had been prompted byïolstoi's "Kreutzer Sonata." The manuscript of her story, it would seem, was in the hands of the Arena Publishing Company long long before the tírst English version of the Ruseian book appeared, and was Brei intended as a serial story for "The Arena Magazine." "Is This Your Son, MyLord? is enjoying a phenomenal ale. Although less than four months have elapsed since it was brought out by the Arena Publishing Company, four editious of five thousand copies each have been issued. In the April number of The Forum, Representative R. Q. Mills, of Texas, will make a critica! analyaia of the census, to show that it is so seriously detective as to be useless. In the same number of The Forum, Senator Hoar of Massaehusetts, who was the chatnpion of the Election Bill in the Senate, constructs an argument to prove that the republican party was untrue to its precedents and to its principies, because the late cougress adjourned without enacting the Kletton Bill. He argües that the series of great historica] achievements of the republican party suffered SO serious a breach by this inactivity. that the party must find new vigor to make its future in any way worthy ot1 its past. Whether treated, each one as an individual production or generally as a citas, Harper's Periodicals reiresent the highest types of American literary and illnstrative work. When on the part of many whose profesaion it is to cater to the readiug public there is a tendency to meet more than half way a taste which is by no means healthy, and course matter is provided, garnished with bad pictures, the bluntiug of the artistir sense is of small moment when compared with the abasement of the moral one. Never have the publisliers of the Magazine, the Weekly or Bazaar or Yonng People lowered that high standard which was assutned in their first numbers. Moditications anl iniprovements have, of course, f olio wed, and to-day it is difticult to conceive how they couid be bettered. Look at the literary side alone, the best-known writers at home and abroad contribute to these publications. For the proper presentation of subject, pictorially, leading artists furnish their designs to be translated by wood cuts, or process, whichevcr method shows better the Ilustrativo idea. A column eulogistic of these publications might be written and would barely suffice to specify their many singular merits. It must be at least satisfactory to the pnbliahera to know that wherever English is the lantruage in use there a Magazine, a VVeekly, a Bazaar, or a Young Feople, hearing the imprint of Harper's & Bros., is read. There are otlier triumplis than "the drum beats" nhich circle the vforld.-