21 NOVEMBER 1874, Page 22

A Strange Friendship; a Story of New Zealand. By C.

Evans.

(Sampson Low and Co.)—A very strange friendship indeed ! It is a little too much to be told that a man, to screen some worthless relative who has got into a terrible scrape, dresses him up as his sister, keeps him for a year or so in his house, and actually takes him out to make calls. We fear that we spoil the author's story by thus revealing the secret, which is meant to be, and must be allowed to be, a surprise. Still this is the feature in the story which challenges notice, and we do not see how the story can be criticised without taking it into accotmt. The story is nothing, though it is written fairly well, without the "strange- ness," and the strangeness borders very closely indeed on the absurd.