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The Colonel's Dream. By Charles W. Chesnutt. 12 mo. pp. 294. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.50.
This is a Southern story, but not of the Before-the-War type. It is frankly up to the times, with the clash of races and the convict camp, and the decayed old gentry. The Colonel of the Confederate army, hardly yet a man, goes to New York, gets wealthy, returns to live in his native village, and tries to put in practice some of his acquired Northern ideas of thrift and fair treatment of all. He finds helpers; there is a love romance; but he fails, and, amid comedy and tragedy, turns his back on his disappointment and his parental home. The style is easy, apparently practiced, and the story does not lack for abundant incident, in which the relations of race have expression.