17 NOVEMBER 1888, Page 40

The Stepmother's Will. By A. Eubule-Evans. (S.P.C.K.)—The will does not

appear till rather late in the story,—till, indeed, the

probable result on the two brothers, one a lazy scamp, the other a hard-working, thrifty man, can be pretty well foretold. Reuben Mills is a very true type of the lazy, good-for-nothing, wife-bullying vagabond, and nobody would have any difficulty in recognising the original. He meets, to be sure, with better luck than most of his kind, in becoming possessed of a "public," the ambition of all true loafers. But as he dies an early and apoplectic death, the moral can hardly be said to suffer.