Balaam and his Master. By Joel Chandler Harris. (Osgood and
Co.)—This is a volume of exceptionally good—yet not painfully smart "—American stories by the popular author of " Uncle Remus," although the reader need not look for the special humour which gave that book its reputation. Perhaps the two best, certainly the two most pathetic, stories in the book are the first and the third—" Balsam and his Master" and "Ananias "- which show the extraordinary, and indeed excessive, loyalty of American negroes to their masters. Sometimes the masters are unworthy, and sometimes the loyalty runs into criminality ; but such circumstances as these do not seem to affect, except in the sense of heightening, the beauty of the peculiar relationship which existed—and to some extent still exists—in the Southern States of America. The book, indeed, deals largely, though not exclusively, with strong emotion run to excess. In " The Old Bascom Place " there is illustrated the attachment of an old land- owner to a house which was once his, although there is also exhibited in it, in the person of Mildred Bascom, "the wit and tenderness of Rosalind blended with the self-sacrificing devotiox of Cordelia." In all respects this is a most enjoyable and whole- some volume.
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