The Spirit of the Orient. By George William Knox. New York: T. Y. Crowell. Price, $1.50.
Professor Knox has spent many years in the East and in his beautifully illustrated work on the manners and customs of that part of the world he has given us a valuable and interesting picture of the awakening of the spirit of progress there. This has been especially noticeable since the Russo-Japanese War; and the rapid increase of our own holdings in the Far East intensifies the profound import of this problem. The author defines sharply the difference between the Eastern and the Western character in the following paragraph: “Man ... seems overpowered by nature in the East, but he attempts to conquer it in the West.”
Plantation Sketches. By Margaret Devereux. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
This collection of delicate sketches of antebellum Southern life gives the experiences of a Southern gentlewoman who loves the old South and who has the power to make others know and love it. The reminiscences possess the blended humor and pathos which characterize the best descriptions of plantation life, and bring clearly before us the scenes of those times. The manner of their telling is finished and most readable, apart from the interest attaching to the incidents narrated.