THE WRITINGS of Olive Schreiner are the firstfruits which modern Africa offers to world-literature. From the fall of the Greek civilization in Egypt and of the Roman in Numidia until our own times, the “Dark Continent” has produced nothing except a few Arab songs and stories to which not even the most strained courtesy can impute literary quality. Olive Schreiner’s “Dreams,” however, have in them the unmistakable signs of such genius as immortalizes whatever it inspires. They are strange and fanciful, but they will not easily be forgotten. She comes of the Boer stock of Cape Colony. Her father was a Lutheran minister at Cape Town, and all her work shows the impression of this heredity. “The Story of an African Farm,” which she published in 1883, was an immediate success, but it was not until “Dreams” appeared in 1890 that the full strength of her genius was evident. She left Africa for Europe in 1883, and she has since spent most of her time in England. She married Mr. Cronwright in 1894. Her latest publication, “An English South African’s View of the Situation” (1899), deals with the overthrow of the Boer republics by the English “Conservatives.”