A Life's Labour. By Emily Margaret Mason. (S. P. C.
K.)— This story is out of the beaten track of gift-books, there being a good deal more of pain and self-sacrifice than of pleasure in it. The author has a distinctly moral and religious purpose, more particularly in the admirable portraiture of Ben Foster, the man of moods, and occasionally of what he somewhat exaggerates by considering as "sins," although most readers of his story will agree with his friend Bella at the end, " I'd not have aught dif- ferent." But religion and morality are of the very essence of the lives of the Marlow family, whose members are sketched in the story, and, in consequence, their appearance here does not seem at all forced. A Life's Labour is an admirable book to place in a Sunday-school library, although in point of style it is much superior to the works which, as a rule, find a place in such a collection.
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