After Twenty Years, and Other Stories. By Julian Sturgis. (Longmans.)—The
eight tales contained in this volume are, if not equally good— a thing hardly to be expected— yet so good as to mark out the collection as something quite uncommon. If we have to indicate a preference, it would be for "The Disappointing Boy" and "The Mad Parson." The laments of the worldly father over the unworldly son, a son who, among other eccen- tricities, wilfully runs second for a scholarship that a poorer friend may get it—what, by-the-way, do the moralists say to this ?—are particularly amusing and not without a suggestion of instruction. The enthusiastic Ferdinand—" He was bent fiercely on loving everybody ; and woe betide the luckless wight who refused to be loved ! "—is admirable ; nor is it possible to help being amused at the parody which the "blooming idiot," as he calls himself, makes of the wise man's Walt-Whitman-like oration. Scarcely inferior to these, if inferior at all, is "The Chief of Science." A reader with taste will feel highly obliged to Mr. Sturgis for this very pleasant book.
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