In Joint Guardians, by Evelyn Everett-Green (Religions Tract Society), we
have one of the beat examples of an avowedly but not ostentatiously good book. There is rather a crowd of characters in it, owing to the fact that Sir Reginald Tempest, a widower with a family, marries Mrs. Edgeler, a widow with a family, and that the two families have troops of cousins, acquaintances, and friends. It would be impossible, even if it were desirable, to give the plot in detail, to enumerate all the sorrows and joys, the matches that come off, and the matches that do not come off. It must suffice to say that the story is realistic in the best sense, and that the true hero of it is Kingsley Tempest, a young man whose life is spent in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but who is able to influence for good others of robuster physique than himself, and with prospects of am. monplace happiness before them which he has not. Joint Guardians is an excellent book to put into the hands of a thoughtful girl of seventeen or so, but she will take a portentous time to read it.
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