The cow-boy has been depicted in fiction before this, but we prophesy that the orchidhunting "puncher" who drifts into the novel "Home" in its third quarter in the December CENTURY, will make himself welcome even in this story crowded with vivid characters.

Some one who is in the secret of the authorship of "Home" tells the Centurion that the author knows his or her cattle country at first hand. This is borne out by the fact that the particular cow-boy in the novel is no relation to the rubber-stamp Westerner of fiction, but is a character as clean-cut and memorable as Gerry or "Ten Per Cent. Wayne."

A new file has been started near the Centurion's desk in which to place guesses on the literary question of the hour, "Who wrote 'Home'?" One expert says, "If it is a new writer, you have made a great discovery; if it is a woman, she has the mind of a man." Lilian Whiting, certainly a judge of literary matters, guesses that this story is by "one of the most brilliant and gifted among the younger American writers, Mary McNeill Fenellosa," whose pen-name is "Sidney McCall."

'Have We a Foreign Policy?" is the pertinent question asked and answered by W. Morgan Shuster in the December CENTURY. This authority on foreign affairs speaks in a way that will be entirely distasteful to those who feel that the Monroe Doctrine is a reasonable basis for our dealings with foreign nations and that the United States is taken seriously as a world power in the Council of Nations. In regard to the Monroe Doctrine, there is a great deal of loose thinking which a careful study of this article by a world authority should tighten.

Always desirous of presenting the best of modern poetry, and not afraid of giving plenty of space to a long poetic contribution if deserving, THE CENTURY offers in December a ballad of generous length by Edwin Markham,-author of "The Man with the Hoe" and "The Juggler of Touraine,"―entitled "The Shoes of Happiness,-the eventful story of the Sultan Mahmud and of Halil, the

Grand Vizir." Frank V. Dumond has done four striking illustrations for the poem, all of them in full color.

Consistent with THE CENTURY'S policy of recording in art and literature the notable achievements of the golden states west of the Rockies, the Magazine will publish in December a charming article by Dr. Henry Van Dyke on "The Mission Play of California." In leading up to his account of this almost unknown and intensely interesting American Oberammergau, he mentions incidentally "the stories with which California from Coronado to Shasta is filled, stirring and marvelous tales of the first explorers, of the troubled Mexican era, of the Bear Republic, and the American conquest, of the 'Argonauts' and the 'Hounds' and the 'Vigilantes.' But none of them all," he says, "is comparable for sheer courage and large humanity, for unselfish motive and picturesque achievement and long results, with the sixty-year adventure of the little serge-clad, sandal-shod Brothers of St. Francis who came to Christianize the 'gentiles.'

An old friend is drawn closer than ever to readers of THE CENTURY by a sympathetic study on "Versatility and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell" by Robert Haven Schauffler in the Christmas CENTURY. With a thorough knowledge of Dr. Mitchell's long list of books,-poetry, science, fiction, history, -and himself a subtle literary craftsman, Mr. Schauffler writes in a way that will delight all the lovers of "Hugh Wynne" and "Westways." There is also a full-page portrait of Dr. Mitchell.

Among the things he tells us is that Dr. Mitchell at thirty proposed to publish a book of verse and was counseled by that earlier artist-physician, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, as follows: "Wait ten years and then consider it again."

"In Lighter Vein" will continue to be the well-brewed cup of black coffee at the end of the repast. More and more this department contrives to foster good writing and sound drawing even where the subjects are not serious.

THE CENTURION.