My Friend Smith. By Talbot Baines Reed. (Religious Tract Society.)—This
"Story of School and City Life" deserves, in a way, the commendation given by the writer of the preface,—him- self a well-known contributor to this kind of literature. The hero is a lad who is sent by a selfish relative to a very inferior sort of school, and who from school obtains a clerkship in the city. His trials and temptations, failures and successes, in his city life occupy the greater part of the volume, and are told in much detail. The fault of the book is, we think, that there is too much of it. There is something depressing, and almost squalid, in this picture of life as it is lived by a certain class of city clerks. We quite think, with the writer of the preface, that the picture should be drawn. There are many readers to whom it may be of very great use. But the author should have confined himself, we think, to typical scenes. On this principle, much might have been retrenched without damage, probably with considerable ad- vantage, to the purpose with which the author has set to work. The hook, we are told, " is sure of a reading." We hope so, for it is really likely to do much good ; but a length about equal to a three-volume novel is certainly excessive.
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