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day better than we should have done before the events of 1898 had brought our true feelings as to our country a little more to the surface.

His last words of song were these, sufficient epitaph and eulogy:—

He was a-weary, but he fought his fight, And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed

To see the august broadening of the light And new earths heaving heavenward from the void.

He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet

Plant daisies at his head and at his feet.

Colonel Hinton says, in telling of the poet's funeral: "The poet's injunction to plant daisies at his head and at his feet,' was not forgotten, for a little maid of fourteen, Miss Daisy Trueheart, was selected to meet that wish."

In order to help to the result that there may never lack successors to these blossoms we cannot forbear from printing here a poem by Elwyn Irving Hoffman:

WHO'LL GIVE A DAISY?

A land that is covered with beautiful flowers,

The world's vast garden of lovely blooms, Where the humblest live 'neath gay-hued bowers,

And are heirs to riches of sweet perfumes. A land that never a season knows,

But comes with blossoms pure and bright

Fields of lilies, forests of rose

'Tis California, Land of Light!

Yet where are the daisies for the grave of Realf?

He earned the fairest of all our blooms,
He won the sweetest of blossom kind;
Flowers that had fitly decked the tombs
Of the Prophets; yet, with his modest
mind,

And his simple soul, he chose not these,-
Nor stately lily, nor roses red,-

But he asked that when his life should cease,

Daisies should grow o'er his lonely bed. Yet where are the daisies on the grave of Realf?

Only daisies! what a small request!

Can we not grant it to him who gave For man and for country his very best, And wrought for us unto the open grave? Who took the fibers of his great heart

And wove for us fabrics of wondrous worth,

Who drank man's gall and left his art
A priceless heritage unto Earth?
Wno 'll give a daisy for the grave of Realf?

Who 'll give a daisy-a little flower

To grow on the grave where the wild grass grows

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A daisy to smile at the stars above Just as he smiled;-no torch, no chant,Only the daisies, and a thought of Love! Let us plant daisies on the grave of Realf.

Making use of the vogue of Mr. Markham's "The Man with the Hoe," the Doubleday & McClure Company have published a thin volume of his verse,1 seventy-three poems, running in length from quatrains to six pages.

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Some of the Eastern literary journals have expressed a mild amusement and surprise over the recent 64 discovery of Mr. Markham on the Coast, protesting that it was no news to them that he is a poet and a good one, that they have been printing his poems in Scribner and elsewhere these ten years. They find in this poem over which the outcry is made nothing better than they have had in a dozen poems printed half a dozen years ago.

In this feeling the OVERLAND shares most decidedly. In the old Californian, with which the present series of this magazine began, there were verses of Markham's as early as July, 1880. Perhaps a list of the verse he contributed may be of bibliographic interest, since he has grown great."

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..July, 1886; January, 1891;

A Meeting... The Rodeo. Youth and Time. .February, 1891; One Life, One Law.....August, 1891. Of these, "A Meeting," "Youth and Time,” and "One Life, One Law," are included in the present collection of his work, although no mention or acknowledgment of that fact is made in the prefatory note where credit is given to other publications.

But all these considerations are apart from the purpose of giving a critical estimate of Mr. Markham's verse as shown in the book before us.

Everybody who reads the name poem must, we think, find it strong from the purely poetical point of view. It has ring

I The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems. Markham. New York: Doubleday & McClure Company: By Edwin 1899.

and rhythm in its music, in the main it is striking in its imagery and diction, and there are phrases and lines, not to say whole paragraphs, that linger long in the mind of even a casual reader. But it is open to that terrible charge of being a poem with a purpose, and the strength in the conception is rather Millet's than Markham's. We frank

ly confess that we like far better most of Mr. Markham's earlier verse, where he sings more because he must, rather than because it is expected of him.

As for the other poems of recent birth, the ones that sound as though Mr. Markham were trying to repeat a success by appealing to the same spirit of discontent, and advocating the "fraternal state," we frankly confess that we do not like them at all, finding neither poetry, nor sound sense in them.

It is to be hoped that this phase of Mr. Markham's literary life will pass as quickly as it came, so far as the world knew, and that once again we shall have him singing the old sort of songs that we have known and loved all these years, the real poetry that he himself has described so well:

POETRY.

She comes as hush and beauty of the night,
And sees too deep for laughter;
Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.

And as an example of the work we have in mind, take this also, printed in the OVERLAND for July, 1886:

A MEETING.

Softly she came one twilight from the dead, And in the passionate silence of her look Was more than man has writ in any book: And now my thoughts are restless, and a dread

Calls them to the Dim Land discomforted;

For down the leafy ways her white feet took,

Lightly the newly broken roses shookWas it the wind disturbed each rosy head?

God! was it joy or sorrow in her faceThat quiet face? Had it grown old or young?

Was it sweet memory or sad that stung Her voiceless soul to wander from its place? What do the dead find in the Silence-grace? Or endless grief for which there is no tongue?

Briefer Notice

A work which we can heartily recommend to any lover of Japan is Letters from Japan,1 by Mrs. Hugh Fraser. The letters cover a period of three years' residence and are now published in the form of two superb volThere has umes, beautifully illustrated. been no attempt at detailed descriptions, or history "beyond that suggested by the interest or fancy of the moment." The style is at all times graceful and entertaining, and will hold the interest of any one, even though he imagine that Japan is nothing to him.

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How many people are there who would be decidedly embarrassed if asked to explain a point in civics-the difference between the Circuit and Supreme Courts, for example; the steps taken to send electors to the State Convention, or even to name the titles of all the members of the Cabinet. There are few people who could read First Lessons in Civics1 without discovering several bits of, news. It is an easily understood little book, designed for school use, containing information vastly more important to a child than the exports and imports of Patagonia or the boundaries of the desert of Gobi. What a child can remember, and what he ought to remember, should decide what studies of this sort he should take, and First Lessons in Civics is among the first books we would recommend.

7 Letters from Japan. By Mrs. Hugh Fraser. New York: The Macmillan Co.: 1899. Price, $7.50.

2 First Lessons in Civics. By S. E. Forman. Book Co.

NOTE

American

BY A typographical accident the fourth line of Miss Brewer's poem on page 23 is, in many copies imperfect. It should read

"The purple mocked by Care."

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Petropaulovsk

ONE YEAR IN KAMCHATKA

A VOYAGE TO PETROPAULOVSK, KAMCHATKA
BY JAMES W. BURLING

N the 29th of March I sailed from San Francisco, bound to Petropaulovsk, Kamchatka, in the good schooner Louis Perry, Captain Matthew Turner, commanding. The schooner was small, being only of one hundred and thirty tons register, and carried a crew of -seven men, all told.

Kamchatka lies 3,700 miles due west from San Francisco, and the route there is a lonely one, not a sail being seen during the entire thirty-seven days of our voyage. The weather was generally stormy, and we were most of the time confined to the cabin, which was very small, consisting only of four open berths, and a table in the

(Copyright, 1899, by OVERLAND MONTHLY PUBLISHING CO. All rights reserved.)

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