Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/283

1894.] Probably it is easier to make this criticism than to suggest an improvement on the way it is managed, as in the case of Doctor Johnson's strictures on the catastrophe in Hamlet. Told by the Colonel is not bad as a take-off on the traveling American. Its fun is not of the delicate or subtle sort, but good, broad, apparent humor, which may be retold with effect to any audience that has not read the book; and this means that many of the stories are on themes sufficiently familiar on their general lines to have all the audience ready to laugh when the time comes,—a great advantage in a funny story. They are told, however, with a style and tang that is new enough to carry off the familiar basis. The plot of Elisabeth: Christian Scientist, recalls strongly Grace Denio Litchfield's story, "A Hard Won Victory." There is the same struggle of the young woman with a mission to proclaim it to the world by taking service as a nurse to an aged and wealthy invalid lady. The most eligible young man in the family connection promptly falls in love with her, as usual, and the trouble begins. The present book has several differences, however, from its predecessors, mainly the peculiar beliefs of the young woman as shown in the sub-title. As a propaganda of the doctrine it is to be feared that the book will not meet with much success, for the reader's interest is more in the heroine as a heroine than as a missionary, and when she at last yields in the good old way, the book is laid down with a sigh of satisfaction.

The list of Archibald Clavering Gunter's "celebrated novels" beginning with "Mr. Barnes of New York" and "Mr. Potter of Texas" and ending, (let us hope), with Baron Montez of Panama and Paris is a steady anti-climax. Not but that the technical workmanship of style may have improved with practice, but the more important points of subject matter, of artistic proportion, of truth to nature and to the unities of art, are more and more sacrificed to the haste that must follow one successful book with another before the public has been able to forget its predecessor. These books are usually sold in the paper-covered edition, and that becomes them far better than the more enduring binding, for it is hardly possible to imagine anybody caring to read Baron Montez twice. It is true the snow-storm scene in New York is cleverly done, but the greater part of the heroine's diary is sickening, and the scene where she snatches Montez's pocketbook is ludicrous.

"The Lady of Fort St. John" fixed Mary Hartwell Catherwood in the minds of many people as a writer that had found a new field for fiction, a field that she worked with great skill and loving care. The result of her work is the bringing to literary life the old semi-French civilization of the upper Mississippi in the somewhat vague limits of the Territory of Illinois. Old Kaskaskia deepens that feeling and will add to the number of people that will look for books by this author, sure that they will contain the results of conscientious study wrought out with a really fine and delicate art. Father Baby, Angelique Saucier, Pierre Menard and Rice Jones ("Reece Zhone,") are new figures in the world of art, and they are living figures, who will make good their claim to length of days.

In a preface to The Soul of the Bishop, "John Strange Winter" says frankly: "I am aware that I have the reputation of being a writer of light stories, of pretty trifles, pour passer le temps, which is one of the disadvantages of beginning