Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1910 — Book news and Reviews. [ARTICLE]

Book news and Reviews.

A copy of the Kilmarnock Burns sold In Boston the other day for $1,025. It was a tall, clean copy of that rare first edition and was ?urchased by a Scotchman, who will take it back to his native clime. The depredations of vandal tourists have almost destroyed the famous chambers of Martin Luther at Wartburg. They have carved their names all over his table and have chipped, so many bits off his bedstead that restoration would mean making It anew. The plaster haß similarly disappeared from the walls and the celebrated inkstaln is no more. The room, in short, is In a state of ruin. “Women in the Making of America,” Mrs H. Addington Bruce’s forthcoming book, will give an adequate account of woman’s work and influence from the earliest years of colonization to the present time. His work is divided ihto seven periods—in the time of the founding, in the forgotten half century, in the Revolution, in the Westward movement, in the struggle over slavery, in the Civil War and In pregent-day America. A great-grandson of Robert Burns is a maker of tea urns in. London. This George Pyrkes is the son of Anne Burns, who was the daughter of the poet's son Robert. He says of his mother that she "was the very Image of Bums himself, with the flashing dark eyes and Jet black hair. She could sing, too. She used to Bing nearly all her grandfather's songs. I am afraid her father, ‘Robbie’s’' son, was not quite everything that he ought to have been, but I know very little of himr but my mother was as good and honest a woman as ever breathed." To be born In the preclnou of a prison and to die the Wife of the proudest monarch In was the fate of Praneoise d’Aublgne. generally known as Mme. de Maintenon. C. C. Dyson, who has written •a new book on "Madame de Maintenon,” urges that she has been the victim of much scandalous gossip, and that she was a woman of singular nobility of character and Ilfs. Mr. Dyson says In his preface: "Having, weighed the evidence for and against disputed points, the author has extracted from the mass of superfluous matter the leading traits of her character and the most interesting episodes of her life." Ghe of the most important parts of the book is Mr. Dyson’s account of Mme. de Maintenon’s great work, the school of St. Cyr.