14 DECEMBER 1895, Page 24

The Bank - Clerk's Secret, and other Tales. Edited by J. Erskine

Clarke, M.A. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.)—This is a collection of short stories,—most of them with a purpose, and an essentially pathetic one, and all more than fairly well written. The bank- clerk, whose secret gives the volume its title, is a young Stoic, of the type of Marcus Aurelius rather than of Epictetus, who keeps from his mother as long as he can the fact that he is• growing blind,—although he knows that this fact must end his career and separate him from the girl he loves with all the passion of his nature. Fortunately, both he and his mother are saved at least from poverty by means which it would be unfair to disclose. The young clerk, his mother, and a clergyman who has. really learned the art of consolation, are well drawn. The only weak thing in the volume is the illustrations, which have a poor look.