20 DECEMBER 1890, Page 25

Wedding. Stories of the Long Lane that has No Turning.

By Robert Overton, and others. (Hutchinson and Co )—We cannot see the applicability of the second title of this collection of stories. Marriage, especially modern marriage, is the last institution to be quoted as an illustration—" leastways in a contrairy sense, with the meaning is the same "—of the popular saying about a long lane. The stories are readable for the most part, but two of them are very silly, and only one, " Dave's Wife," can claim re- markable excellence. This American tragedy in a nutshell possesses real merit, and touches the reader with the sudden, keen pathos of Mr. Bret Harte's pictures of a kind of life and a mixture of classes utterly strange to our English notions and experience.