"Rowrow.'—By, Princess Der _Lingh New York: Dodd, Mead, & Ca.
With an unrestrained use of ex, clamation marks Princess Der Ling contrives to. make a rather ate Yenuated book out of unimportant recollections of her childhood in China. It is regrettable that she was unable to conjure up recolleetions that would have depicted for Occidental readers more intimately and more vividly the delectable customs of her country. "Kowtow"! is a proliferation of commonplace experiences not characteristically, Chinese. Books on China written by foreign. women in the last few years—notably the books of Florence Ayscough—have been mora illuminating.
Princess Der Ling had advantages denied to most Chinese women, Born of Manchu parents, she acquired in travels with her father a knowledge of foreign usages, which, on her going to Peking, attracted the" attention of the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, td whom she became lady-in-waiting Her two years vin the Empress Dewager's entourage was, the basis for her book, "Two Years in the Forbidden City," which, without ty pretending to literary merit, was, nevertheless, an authentic memoir of the great female monarch. Out fof the scraps left over from that book the Princess wrote "Old Buddha," a somewhat imaginative account of Tsu Hsi's life.
"Kowtow" might have had some reason for being had it been writer} in tome quaint Chinese adaptation of Engl But it isn't; it is simply amateurish in style and burdened with trivial incidents, typical of which is the one froma which it takes its title, The Prine cess! father, Lord Vu Keng, Mine ister to France during the Boxer uprising, was constrained to leave Paris because of the resentment of the Parisians against the killing off foreigners in Peking. He went ta Geneva and there the Princess bee came interested in amateur drama tics. "The boy who played ope posite me was supposed to take me his arms and comfort me.
1 wept bitterly and the boy touched my hair—perhaps kissed me, though 1 do not remem ber for sure..."
The upshot of it was that the Chinese members of Lord Yu's became indignant at nese woman patted in public and began to gossip. One secretary in particular protested that kissing was not a Chinese custom. AS punishment the secretary was quired to "kowtow" to the Princess,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.