The Land of Every Man. By Albert Kinross. (Cassell and
Co. 55. net.)—The "Land" so described is America, and the teller of the story of a certain English writer, Davenant by name, is Mr. Preston, an American publisher (was it according to publish- ing etiquette that Mr. Preston, having received from "a moderately obscure London house" the suggestion of an American edition of a certain novel, should at once write direct to the author and seek to secure his next book?) Davenant's experiences, as related by Mr. Preston, are very interesting. We may perhaps be per
mated to doubt whether a man of such literary genius would really have remained on the verge of destitution for so many years,—he is nearly forty when we are introduced to him. Apart from this, we recognise the verisimilitude of Mr. Preston's narratives. Perhaps the most pathetic is "The Storiof Margaret Noyes." Margaret Noyes, a writer on the other side of the Atlantic, falls in love with Davenant as she sees him in his writings. But she does not know, for he has never had the courage to tell her during their correspondence, that he is a cripple and deformed, and in the feeblest health. She comes over to England, and he feels that he can do nothing but fly from her. In the end, Mr. Preston takes his friend out to America, and he dies just aa he comes in sight of the colossal Liberty which keeps the entrance to New York Harbour. That is well managed. It would hardly have done for him to land.
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