Ardis Claverton. By Frank R. Stockton e .. works oft o Low
and Sampson Co.)—Extravagance is the life and source` `of a kind whicp author of
" Rudder Grange," but it is extrava
Virgion;aniovCeraleop. aoerficahtowewmhot gladly allow him. The man-slayinkaa this story introduces us, with her embarras 44,1:jag charming as her surroundings, relations, and proceedings are impossible, a brave, delicate, dainty, sweet, daring, outlandish creature, whose exploits of horsemanship and man-quelling are wildly fanciful, but thrilling too, and the "inadvertent captivation " all round is deliciously comic. The testhetic lover, happily described by a rival as " the head ass of all the world," who comes to an un- expectedly tragical end, is by far the best caricature of a wearisome craze that has been produced—not excepting Mize Broughton's in " Second Thoughts "—and the horse-stealing episode, which gives us a glimpse of a social condition we had believed to be as dead as the " Nick of the Woods " state of things, is very fine and powerfuL Mr. Stockton's peculiar humour, which is not to everybody's taste, but suits ours, pervades the book ; its quaintness, its subdued tone, its sub-acid hints, con-
treating with its occasional unfetttered drollery (as displayed in Shad, the Negro), are all at their best in this story, one that could not be imagined to have the slightest foundation in any kind of fact.
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