Literary Notes

Geurge Kennan's next article in the Century will be an episode of his Sibe'ian journey. nnd will have nothiag to do with the exiles. Mr. Kennan had a very stmnge and amusing experience whicb he wiil describe in this article, viz : A visie to one of the Grand Lamas of Asia. The Grand Lama Thibet is the one best known to the worlJ, but there is also a Grand Lama in the IJ aikal - one whom no European is known to have visited in sixty years except Mr. Kennan. Mr. Kennan exchanged photographs with this incarnation of tbe divine, and the portrait of the old dignitary will form tbe frontispieoe of the March Century. The latest volume of Ticknor's Paper Series is "A Woman of Honor," by H. C. Bunner, the editor of Puck, and the author of "Midge," "The Story of a New York House." It is a dramatic and intense story. The dialogue is crisp and sparkling, as might be expected trom the witty editor of Puck. Some of the sketches are evi dently portraits of well-known Americans delicately and highly outlined, and welldrawn types ot New York character - handled with great skill; and as the plot is unusual as well as intricate, the book will be read through with great interest by whoever begitis it. The great sucoesa of the preceeding novel of this series, "The Desmond Hundred," which has besn regarded in many quarters as an able answer to "Robert Elsmere," has given rise to an unexpected demand; and Bunner's brilliant and vivaious story issure of a high degree of success. In " The Popular Science Monthly " for March the more elabórate papers are pleasanlly varied with briefer articles of a lighter character. Dr. Andrew D. White's "New Chapters in the W arfare of Science," with which the number opens, is pungent throughout, and will not ba dropped till it has been read to the end. It concludes the suhject of "Demouiacal Possession and Insaniiy," and shows how the clergy of the different churches not long ago vied with one another in vexing the victims of insanity, and how medical science glowly introduced more humane treatment, and finally drove back superstition from this part of the field. A sketcfi and a portrait, from a three-huudred yeara'-old original, are given of Pierre Belon, a famous French naturalist of the sixteenth century, who was the father of the binary gystem of nomenclature and of comparativo anatomy. The interest of the various department9 is maintained at, its usual hiph standard. New York: D. Appleton & Company. Fifty cents s nuraber, f5 a year. In the Forum for March, whieh begina the seventh volume, several subject are dii-cussed of large political and commercial importance. Prof. J. Q. Schurman, of Cornell Utiiversity, who ia a Oanadian by birth, describes the resources of the Canadian half oL the continent, and concludes that there is as great a destiny for Canada as for th United State?; and he predicts Ihat the Canadiana will never favor annexation, because they do not need to burden themselves with the problems of the United States, of the South in particular. Mr. Isaac L. Rice point8 out as the primary cause of railway demoralization the habit of borrowing and buying proxies, whieh leads to a loss of a pense of trust in stockholders and enables manipulators to wreek proper ties and to pursue ar.y policy that helps forward their private schemes. This is bribery always in its effect and ofien in its foren; and the remedy suggested it in law making the buying of proxies punishable and changing the rrevalent methods of the transfer of stock. Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon mkes an argumeut tor the extensión of the dflivery of letters by carriers to persons in the country as well a? to those in cíties; and this he calis the next postal reform. In tbis matter we are far behind the European government. - The Forum Publishing Co., 253 Fifth Ave., Y. Y.