THE SILENT PARTNER.* IT is profoundly interesting to see the

social and economical ques- tions which have been settled, or, perhaps, we should rather say

compromised, among us, reappearing in the kindred community on the other side of the Atlantic. Some thirty years ago everyone was reading "Charlotte Elizabeth's" Helen Fleetwood, a book which had a success of the same kind as that obtained by Uncle Tom's Cabin, though it was limited by the inferiority of the sub- ject, which was not one that interested the whole world, and by the want of genius, especially of the humorous faculty of genius, in the author. Who that read that tale—and few who are now in

middle life will have failed to do so—does not remember the har- rowing picture that it gives of life in the "factory town?" The

narrow, stifling lanes, crowded with a population drawn from the healthier air of the country by the promises of a liberal wage ; the tall factory, with the dangers of its unguarded machinery and of its deadly atmosphere ; the "hands," recklessly gay in youth and prematurely worn and embittered against the world in age ; the fraudulent subterfuges which defeated the provisions. by which the law sought to defend the helplessness of women and children,—all these things were described with a passionate power, which was often doubtless unjust, but which certainly did help to

snake things better. And now we find them all described again in The Silent Partner.

Those who know how Miss Phelps can write—who have read, for instance, that remarkable little tale Hedged In, noticed not long ago in these columns, in which she deals with another great

social question—will be prepared for a remarkable book, nor will they be disappointed. The story runs somewhat in this fashion.

'The first chapter introduces us to Perley Kelso, the only child of wealthy New England millowner, a young lady who has never bad occasion to think, and never been allowed to feel a pain, kindly of heart, with a taste for resthetic luxury, engaged to be married to her father's junior partner, one Maverick Hayle.

Before the end of the chapter, the fairy palace of her life dissolves. Going to the opera, and waiting while aunt and cousin enter a shop to make some necessary purchase, she talks with one of her father's " hands " ; reaching home, she finds a telegram which tells her that her father has been crushed to death on the railroad. Going down to the house near the factory she meets the " hand " again, talks with her, hears something of her life, and so comes to think that she ought to do something for what she gets from the great mill, ought, in fact, "to be partner in Hoyle and Kelso."

Messrs. Hayle, father and son, are very polite to the young lady when she puts this request to them, but of course refuse it. So she must be content to be "a silent partner." In that capacity, she can at least see what the life of her people really is, and that she does ; and so we get some strange revelations—Miss Phelps 'can always refer to evidence for her statements—of fac- tory life in New England. Then appears on the stage Mr.

Garrick, junior partner in the firm, a man who has "risen from the ranks," just, but hard, so the common opinion of him rims. About the same time, Perley discovers that she does not love her betrothed husband, and so dismisses him. Does the reader imagine that Mr. Garrick will succeed him ? Not so ; the "silent partner," who asserts her power by putting an end to a strike, or riot we should rather call it, when the "men of busi- ness" had failed to make themselves heard, has enough to do with- out love. It is, perhaps, this feature of Miss Phelps' tale that, though it is not intended by the author to be specially prominent, will most interest an English reader, especially if he has watched at all the progress of the "woman question" in the United States. The description of the sorrows, the discontents, the aspirations of the "hands," powerful as it is, is in a way familiar matter to us. A more novel social interest attaches to the aspect in which our author seems to pat marriage :—

" I cannot tell,' said the woman ; I do not need you now. Women talk of loneliness. I am not lonely. They are sick and homeless.

I am neither. They are miserable. I am happy. They grow old. I am not afraid of growing old. They have nothing to do. If I had ten lives, I could fill them! No, I do not need you, Stephen Garrick. Besides,' she added, half smiling, half sighing, believe that have been a silent partner long enough. If I married you, sir, I should invest in life, and you would conduct it. I suspect that I have a pre- ference for a business of my own. Perhaps that is apart of the trouble."

And the humbler heroine of the story conies from other motives

• The Bilent Partner. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Author of "The Gates Ajar," an London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 187L

" Concordance " deserves a general welcome. It affords another to much the same resolve. "I'll not marry you;" she says to her lover :—

"4 I'll not marry you,' said the girl, feebly; I'll not marry anybody. Maybe it isn't the way a girl had ought to feel when she likes a young fellow,' added Sip, with a kind of patient aged bitterness crawling into her eyes. 'But we don't live down here so's to make girls grow up like girls should, it seems to me. Things as wouldn't trouble rich folks troubles us. There's things that troubles me. ra never marry any- body, Dirk. I'll never bring a child into the world to work in the mills ; and if I'd ought not to say it, I can't help it, for it's the truth, and the reason, and I've said it to God on my knees a many and a many times. I've said it before Catty died, and I've said it more than ever since, and I'll say it till I die. never bring children into this world to be fac- tory children, and to be factory boys and girls, and to be factory men and women, and to see the sights I've seen, and to bear the things I've borne, and to ran the risks I've run, and to grow up as I've grown up, and to stop where I've stopped,—never. I've heard tell of slaves before the war that wouldn't be fathers and mothers of children to be slaves like them. That's the way I feel, and that's the way I mean to feel. I won't be the mother of a, child to go and live my life over again. I'll never marry anybody."

"There's other girls. Some other girl will do." So she consoles her lover. And in the drawing-room wedded life is represented by a very silly little cousin of the noble Perley. 'There will always be silly women enough,' thinks doubtless Miss Phelps,' toper- petuate the race.' Yes, but what of Mr. Garrick, what of poor Dirk, what of men generally, if all the nobler women are to think of "wifehood only in its prosaic and undesirable aspects "? What of the generations that are to come after us if, under the influence -of this new monasticism, all the better part of this deny them- selves or are denied any interest in them ?

We turn again, however, to what is the immediate purpose of the book. Here is a passage of which every word seems familiar to us in this country. The old factory " hand " in the workhouse rambles on— "Now this is what I had to say ; in the name of the State of Massa- chusetts, this is what I've got to say : I've worked to factories fifty-six years. I haven't got drunk not since I was fit een year old. I've been about as healthy, take it off and on, as most folks, and I guess about as smart. I'm a moral man, and I used to be a Methodist class-leader. I've worked to factories fifty-six years steady, and I'm sixty-six year old, and in the poor-us. I don't know what the boys would say if they see me in the poor-us. I've married a wife and burial her. I've brought up six children and buried 'em all. Me and the bed and the chair and the wall are the end on't. It kind o'bothers me, off and on, wonderin' what the boys would say. There was three as had the scarlet fever, and two as I lost in the war (three and two is five ; and one—) there's one other, but I don't rightly remember what she died on. It was a gal, and kinder dropped away. I've worked fifty-six years, and I've earned my bread and butter and my shoes and hats, and I give the boys a trade, and I give 'em harnsome coffins ; and now I'm sixty-six year old and in the poor-us. Once when I broke my leg, and the gal was sick, and the boys was in the tin-shop, and them mother she lay abed with that baby that kep' her down so long, I struck for higher wages, and they turned me off. There was other times as I struck for wages, I forget what for, and they turned me off. But I was a young man then, and so I sawed wood and waited my chances, and got to work ag'in, and bided my time, in the name of the State of Massachusetts. Now I've testified afore the Legislature, and I've got my notice ; and away up in New Hampshyre they knew the yellow ochre on my close, and I couldn't get the toothache out of my voice, and I wouldn't disown my honest name,—in the name of the State of Massachusetts, I wouldn't beg for honest work, unless I got it in my honest name,—and so I am sixty-six year old, and in the poor-us."

There is a melancholy satisfaction in reading this. There are other places besides the "old country" where these problems of labour and pauperism are troubling men. In New England indeed they seem to have come rapidly to the front. Is it inevitable that civilization should produce them ? In that thought there is certainly more melancholy than satisfaction.

Regarded in a literary point of view the volume is not an improvement on what Miss ?helps has given us before. The style is full of affectation and false ornament. Take this passage from

the description of a flood :—

"Between the silent, thronged banks and the mute, unclouded sky, the river writhed like a thing that was tombed alive. The spatter of the cascades had become smooth humps, like a camel's. Thegreat pulse of the dam beat horribly. The river ran after it, plunged at it, would run full and for ever. It looked as hopeless as sin, and as long as eternity. You gazed and despaired. There was always more, more, more. There was no chain for its bannding. There was no peace to its

cries. No sepulchre could stifle it, no death still it. You held out your hands and cried for mercy to it."

Nothing could be in worse taste than this. It says much for the general power shown in the Silent Partner that such a fault does not affect one's estimate of it as a book of real ability.