11 JUNE 1904, Page 25

Quaker Grey. With an Introduction by A. C. Curtis. (The

Astolat Press. 2s. 6d. net.)—Elizabeth Asbridge, whose auto- biography is published under this title, was, we allow, an in- teresting person; but we cannot accept Mr. Curtis's high estimate of her. The facts of her life are that she ran away from her home to be married at the age of fourteen; that she took a second husband at twenty-three, and a third at thirty-three, and that she left this third two years before her death on a call to preach in Ireland. She gives an account of her spiritual history which may or may not be true. All the outside witness to her saintliness is a testimony from the Friends' National Meeting of Ireland, relating to the evangelistic work of her last year, and a curious rhapsody, "a rather un-Quakerly lament upon her death," as the editor puts it, supposed to be written by her mother. "It is not easy to understand," we are told, "how such a character should have believed herself to have actually heard unearthly voices." We should think that the " voices " are quite in harmony with her character and life. To speak quite plainly, she was a little crazed.