equal to itself. Many books signed by Dumas may be neglected without
loss. Even to his best works, one or other of his assistants was apt
to assert a claim. The answer is convincing. Not one of these
ingenious men ever produced, by himself, anything that could be
mistaken for the work of the master. All his good things have the same
stamp and the same spirit, which we find nowhere else. Again, nobody
contests his authorship of his own 'Memoirs,' or of his book about his
dogs, birds, and other beasts--'The Story of My Pets.' Now, the merit
of these productions is, in kind, identical with many of the merits of
his best novels. There is the same good-humor, gayety, and fullness of
life. We may therefore read Dumas's central romances without much fear
of being grateful to the wrong person. Against the modern theory that
the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of many hands in many ages, we can
urge that these supposed "hands" never did anything nearly so good for
themselves; and the same argument applies in the case of Alexandre
Dumas.

A brief sketch of his life must now be given. "No man has had so many
of his possessions disputed as myself," says Dumas. Not only his right
to his novels, but his right to his name and to legitimate birth, was
contested. Here we shall follow his own account of himself in his
'Memoirs,' which do not cover nearly the whole of his life. Alexandre
Dumas was born at Villers-Cotterets-sur-Aisne, on July 24th, 1803(?).
He lived to almost exactly the threescore and ten years of the
Psalmist. He saw the fall of Napoleon, the restoration of the rightful
king, the expulsion of the Legitimate monarch in 1830, the Orleans
rule, its overthrow in 1848, the Republic, the Empire, and the
Terrible Year, 1870-1871. Then he died, in the hour of the sorrow
of his

"Immortal and indomitable France."

[Illustration: ALEXANDRE DUMAS.]

Dumas's full name was noble: he was Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la
Pailleterie. His family estate, La Pailleterie, was made a marquisate
by Louis XIV. in 1707. About 1760 the grandfather of Dumas sold his
lands in France, and went to Hayti. There in 1762 was born his father,
son of Louise Cossette Dumas and of the Marquis de la Pailleterie. The
mother must have been a woman of color; Dumas talks of his father's
"mulatto hue," and he himself had undoubted traces of African blood.
Yet it appears that the grandparents were duly married. In 1772, his
wife having died, the old marquis ret