[Review of The Colonel's Dream]

THE COLONEL'S DREAM, By Charles W. Chestnutt; Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, W. T. Smith & Co., Utica; $1.25.

Colonel French, the hero of Charles W. Chesnutt's tale of the South, "The Colonel's Dream," won his title fighting for the Confederacy before he had reached his majority. At the close of the war the old family home in Clarendon passed into other hands because of the many changes brought about by the great conflict; the young man, alone in the world, gladly went North into the office of a relative. It is some years after this episode that the colonel, having acquired a goodly fortune, accompanied by his young son, returns to the home of his youth. The scenes which had been familiar to him years before recall the past vividly, and he responded to the desire to once more count himself a resident of Clarendon. Life in the North has changed the colonel's attitude towards many problems of the South and it is his longing to solve them in the light of the North that calls down upon his head the wrath of the townsfolk. This is the theme of Mr. Chesnutt's story–the attempt of the colonel to reform these Southern people. Theoretically, the schemes are not entirely wrong, but it is very evident that it is impossible to have them work out satisfactorily in real life.