"The Wife of His Youth, and Other Stories," by Charles W. Chestnutt, is a volume of stories of the color line, all of them interesting. No matter how fortunate the circumstances, there is a pathos to the life of these people, with whom the author is in such kindly sympathy. The aristocratic pretensions of the "Blue Vein Society," the agoning of her "Old Mammy," the dispair of the black son of the white sheriff makes one feel that after all the world is akin in that a matter of emotion is not dependent upon the pigment of one's skin. The various types of the race are well portrayed, and the high ideals of the author would inculcate are in striking contrast to the "coon" propensities with which fiction and the stage have made us so familiar. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co, Boston. $1.50.)