Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport

Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green,

and red,

When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my Dead)

What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,

And burn your lights faintly! My country is

there,

Above the star prick'd by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's there, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;

But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length

Into wail such as this and we sit on forlorn

When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea,
Both both my boys! If in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me.

66

MOTHER," AND "MOTHER CAREY'S

CHICKENS."

A REVIEW FROM The Outlook

The young girls and older women who have adopted the habits, dress, and moral standards of the fast set are, happily, a very small minority, but the signs of their increase in numbers are very disconcerting. It is a great relief, in this widening morass of lowered standards, cheapened and superficial ideals of life, and love of vulgar publicity, to come upon simple, wholesome, fundamental stories which deal reverently with the vital things of life. Such a story of Mrs. Norris's "Mother" after half a dozen novels of the emancipated kind, gives one a sense of escape from fetid air into mountain air, from a casino into a home. It is a very simple story, and for that reason those who require highly seasoned fiction whose chief figures are irresponsible men seeking "soul unions" and feather-brained women skirting the edges of the

great disaster will class it as archaic and outgrown; as a matter of fact, it is one of the really fundamental stories of the season. The OUTLOOK has already summarized its simple plot: a young girl taken from a pinched and crowded home full of love and devotion into an atmosphere of luxury, idleness, overfeeding, over-drinking, over-dressing, and nervous endeavor to be free by escaping from the care of children, the responsibility of the home, and going back to the old familiar ties which, since society began to be civilized, have bound men and women alike to duty, honor, and unselfishness, and to the searching and redeeming education of work and service and self-denial, which have been rejected and cast aside as outworn whenever society has reverted to the barbarism of physical ease and spiritual poverty.

The author of "Mother" has not written from a place of shelter; she has made her own way and has learned in the school of life those primary lessons which, like the old-fashioned drill in reading, writing and arithmetic, train the mind for the freedom that comes through strength. She has been a bookkeeper, librarian, settlement worker, and reporter, as well as a wife and mother; and has therefore seen life from many sides. She has kept a clear sense of values, a sane view of the supreme things, a resolute grip on the fundamental realities. The rush for freedom has not taken her off her feet; nor has the moral confusion through which society is passing, on its road to that real freedom which is based on self-denial, subordination of self, and a clear, joyful acceptance of duty,