Book Reviews [pp. 222-224]

Book Reviews.
nia, of great interest to students. They are to be
regarded, however, only as samples fromn Mr. Sutro's
wonderful collection, in which it is known that still
more interesting documents, discovered later among
papers bought without examination, remain to be
published.
A Book by Bishop Kip.'
BISHOP KIP has so long been a prominent figure
in California society, that it needs but to say that he
has published a book on his early day experiences to
assure all Californians that it is something worth
reading. W ealth of material, a pleasant style, shrewd
observation, and absolute truthfulness are good factors in any book; and in this all are combined. The
last quality is lacking, it must be said, in many Pioneer stories, but that is rather because of untrained
observation, faulty memories, and the glamor that the
lapse of time has thrown over the days of'49, than
from any intention to mislead. The lie that the
teller fully believes is as hard a matter to fight as the
half truth.
But Bishop Kip came to California impelled by
no romantic love of adventure, no search for E1 Dorado. It was in all soberness he came. "After
twenty-six Bishops had said it was my duty to go,
all I could do was to assent." His voyage here was
marked by the scenes of excitement that fill all stories of the passage hither in the early fifties,-overcrowded steamers, crossing the Isthmus on mule
back, tales of robbery and danger from treacherous
natives and reckless travelers, storm and shipwreck,
and a final reaching of the Golden Gate when hope
was almost gone.
Then came a series of apostolic journeys to the
different scattered towns, mining camps, and military posts, to perform the offices of the Church
where they had long been strangers.
The beginnings of the Church in each of the lrincipal towns is given a chapter, bringing thenarrative
up to I857. The manuscript of the book was written in I86o, while the times of which it treats were
still fresh in the author's mind.
All Episcopalians will prize the book highly, and
men of other denominations will read it with interest
and profit.
Travel Books.
Mrs. Rollins's book, From Pine to Paln,2 is a
pleasant study of the effect of travel on the New
England conscience; for though a New Yorker, Mrs.
Rollins pleads guilty to having the introspective,
moralizing Boston temperament. She begins her
lessons at the very first point the steamer touches,
Newport News. On a drive to Old Point Comfort
she forswears botanizing for all her southern trip:
tropical plants she finds do not "classify" readily.
1 Early Days of My Episcopate. By Right Rev. Wm.
Ingraham Kip. New York: Thomas Whittaker. i892.
aFrom Pine to Palm. By Alice W. Rollins. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons: i892.
Instead of being moved to moral indignation at the
dirt and rags of St. Thomas, she finds that these are
picturesque. At Barbadoes she resents English
"improvements."' No one wants civilization in
the tropics." "Yonder comes a little girl with a
white dress on that is almost clean, and very nearly
whole. It is too bad!"
At Rio Janeiro her demoralization is complete.
She is driven up) into the mountains by yellow fever
epidemic, and spends enough time in a tropic garden at Tijuca to weary of its brightness and bloom.
The Bermudas offer an interlude of fine description, and then Mrs. Rollins takes her readers over
the Canadian Pacific and on to Alaska. She has so
far lost her missionary spirit that she gives but one
line to the Indians and only a page to Sitka. Her
time is taken up with nature, the trees, the glaciers,
the stars. She can hardly get over her surprise at the
mildness of climate, the delicacy of tint and outline
in Alaskan scenery.
Altogether it is a pleasant book to read, and merits the sumptuous dress and illustration the Putnams
have given it. But let no man buy the book under
the impression that he will find in it anything like
guide book information or geographical statistics.
The very antipodes of Mrs. Rollins's book in
style, as nearly in the region described, is Doctor
Coltnian's The Chinese.8 Doctor Coltman went as a
medical missionary to northern China. Chinanfu
was the city he-chose to dwell in for the most part.
Mrs. Rollins could not have written, "He was invoking Buddha to help either he or I," neither
could she have noted or described, as the Doctor
does, a thousand things pertaining to the domestic
and social life, to say nothing of matters strictly
medical. Doctor Coltman's missionary fervor was
sufficient to take him far from home and from lucrative practice or the chance of it; but it is nowhere
sufficient to interfere with hard-headed coolness of
observation, and a scientific frankness of speech that
at times verges on the startling.
The Chinese, as here depicted by a partial observer, with remarkable opportunities to penetrate
into their domestic life, are no more lovable than
the people of our Western slope have found them.
They have their virtues,-especially the laboring
classes, -economy, industry, and a whole list more;
the higher classes are dignified and courteous, but
they are mercenary, suspicious. untruthful, and devoidl of morality,-judging by Western standards,a lapse fromn morality on the part of a man, being
made known to his friends, renders him a laughing
stock, it may be, but there is no healthful moral indignation back of the laughter.
In the political outlook for China, Doctor Coltman
finds little that is favorable. He declares that they
must rouse from their contemptuous disregard of
3The Chinese, Their Present and Future: Medical,
Political, and Social. By Robert Coltman, Jr., M.D.
Philadelphia: F. A. Davis: x89I.
1892.1
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