Sukie's Boy. By Sarah TyMer. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— Whenever we
open a book bearing the name of the author of " Oitoyenne Jacqueline," we may expect to find quiet, subtle delinea- tions of character developed in the course of the narrative, and many quaint touches of humour, which are seldom separable from a suggestion of natural, homely pathos. These qualities are so dis- tinctly marked in the story of Stacie's Boy, that we cannot close the last page without feeling that we have been amongst the realities of real life, with nothing in it that is particularly sensational, but much that is heroin amidst common, if not sordid surroundings. The descrip- tion of the phlegmatic, ignorant old watchmaker whom self-conceit overbears the whole household, and who dies after losing what little mechanical skill he possessed, is in the author's best manner, but is perhaps inferior in drawing to that of his two daughters, Snkie and MUM. The former is a real heroine, plain, uuplessiog, even coarse with care and toil, but pure and unselfish in heart ; the younger is more genteel, and sufficiently attractive to win the attentions of a companion of her brother, a scamp who forsakes her in her hour of greatest need. Her child, as well as the motherless infant of the dissolute brother, is left to the protection of the sisters, who, in poverty and almost in absolute want, contrive, chiefly by the exertions of Sukie, to maintain them both. One of these boys displays the weakness and vice that would lead to ruin but for his early death; the other, the humble worth and honest endurance which, after come trials which give the reader a few anxious moments lest virtue should go unrewarded all round, lead to a placid and by no means a romantic termination. The volume is firmly bound and fairly illustrated.
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