A Rough Road. By Mrs. E. Linnaeus Banks. (Blackie.)—This is
a good little story of the unmistakably didactic sort, which recalls —though not too often or in too striking a manner—the legend of the industrious and the idle apprentice. It tells of a boy, Robert Wallis by name, whose father, perhaps because he is a school- master, is too fond of the rod as a means of education. Hence, not unnaturally, the boy runs away from home. He takes to the life of a pedlar of needles, and, being steady and industrious, attains a competence, and is happily married. The idle apprentice in this case is Walter Abbot, of whom it is truly said that he was "a young man of splendid abilities and great opportunities ; but false indulgence, together with a lack of Christian and moral training, had been his ruin " But although the main object cf this story is a didactic one, it is also deserving of praise for the pleas- ing and careful portraits that it gives of the three leading characters in it—Robert Wallis, Tom Field, and the girl Monica. Pawick. Altogether, Mrs. Linnmus Banks has not written a better book than A Rough Road.
Previous page
