Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-57.pdf/911

 hung the spicy tale called In Sight of the Goddess, by Harriet Riddle Davis, just issued in Lippincott’s Lotus Library.

Like the previous novelettes of this charming little library of gold and green, this tale is a breezy narrative of American life, full of satire, banter, drollery, and love. The typical Western family newly transplanted in the fashionable soil of the capital and elevated to a cabinet position is pilloried, and the scandal of the town is served up, with plenty of light condiment, in repartee and abundant conversation. Running parallel with all this is the love-story of Stephen Barradale, private secretary to Secretary of the Treasury Childs, as well as lackey to his family, and Constance, the great official’s daughter. That he wins her at last is an open secret which will not dull the edge of the delighted reader’s relish.

The author of Idylls of Inverburn should know well how to write stories of provincial life. He is a born celebrant of country manners and country pathos, and never has Robert Buchanan, throughout his long and busy career as poet and story-teller, written anything sweeter or more romantic than this short tale called A Marriage by Capture, just published by the Lippincotts in their delicate little set of short stories in stiff covers, The Lotus Library.

The narrative is a swift one, laid in Ireland, where a lawless set of gentlemen and peasants, equally intemperate and unscrupulous, are represented as carrying off Miss Catherine Power of Castle Craig for the beneﬁt of her reckless cousin, Patrick Blake, who wants her estates, of which he is next heir, and her love. Blake is pursued by a rival lover, Philip Langford, and is taken into custody; but when he is about to be tried, a letter is received from Miss Power which absolves her cousin. She returns quietly to her home, and the story reveals that her real captor was Philip Langford. When he is wounded nearly to death, Catherine betrays her affection for him, and thus, after all, he wins a wife by capture.