In 1910 there were 225 living descendants from this union scattered throughout the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific; many in Canada, others in London, Liverpool, Paris, Berlin and Antwerp.  For over 200 years these descendants have married and inter-married with Indian, Negro and White with no serious detriment except the introduction of tuberculosis into one branch of the family by an infusion of white blood.  It is interesting to note that crime, drunkenness, pauperism or sterility has not resulted from these two hundred years of miscegenation.  Thrift and intelligence, longevity and fertility have been evident.  In every war except the Mexican, the community has been represented; one member of the group became a bishop in the A.M.E.  Church; one, chaplain in the United States army, and many, now white, are prominent in other walks of life.  Several golden weddings have been celebrated.  Several have reached the age of a hundred years while many seem not to have begun to grow old until three score years have been reached.

If one enters into the spirit of Gouldtown, and reads hastily the dry, Isaac-begat-Jacob passages, the study moves like the story of a river that loses itself in the sands.  “Samuel 3rd. when a young man went to Pittsburgh then counted to be in the far west and all trace of him was lost.”  “Daniel Gould ... in early manhood went to Massachusetts, losing his identity as colored.”  Such expressions are typical of the whole study.  A constant fading away, a losing identity occurs.  The book is clearly the story of the mulatto in the United States.

Aside from an occasional lapse in diction, it is a careful study with 35 illustrations and many documents such as copies of deeds, wills, family-bible and death records.

WALTER DYSON.

NOTES

“The Creed of the Old South,” by Basil Gildersleeve, has come from the Johns Hopkins Press.  This is a presentation of the Lost Cause to enlarge the general appreciation of southern ideals.

From the same press comes also “The Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Harlan,” by Floyd B. Clark.  The author gives an interesting survey of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, tracing the constitutional doctrine of the distinguished jurist.

The Neale Publishing Company has brought out “The Aftermath of the Civil War in Arkansas,” by Powell Clayton.  The author was governor of the State from 1868 to 1871.  Not desiring to take radical ground, he endeavors to be moderate in sketching the work of different factions.

From the press of Funk Wagnalls we have “Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; Musician, His Life and Letters,” by W. C. Berwick Sayres.

Dean B. G. Brawley, of Morehouse College, contributed to the January number of “The South Atlantic Quarterly” an article entitled “Pre-Raphaelitism and Its Literary Relations.”