Ships that Pass in the Night. By Beatrice Harraden. (Lawrence
and Bullen.)—There is a great deal of cleverness, and a good deal of human nature as well, in this rather dismal story of discontent, dullness, and death. But largo capitals are rather too much in evidence, and the various characters that figure in the story are far too fond of speaking to each other in a discourteous fashion. Thus, the hero is the Disagreeable Man, and the heroine is Little Brick. When the Disagreeable Man, otherwise Robert Allitsen, speaks to Little Brick—it is, however, another man who thus styles her—about her experiments in photography, he tells her flatly : "You have no talent for photography. You have not made the slightest progress." She, when provoked to give a piece of her mind, says : "Nothing is easier than to make fun of others. It is the resource of the ignorant." Both Little Brick and the Disagreeable Man arc philanthropists of an efficient sort, though in different ways, and the details of their kindnesses in the neighbourhood of the Petershof Kurhaus, where they meet, are pleasant enough. The death of Bernardino Holme—so Little Brick is properly designated—will seem to most readers a gratuitous and even inartistic piece of cruelty, for this story has the general characteristics of one that ought to end happily. It is to be hoped that the author of Ships that Pass in the Night will not give way to the popular affect ition of cyn'cism, for there is decided promise in what seems to be her firs; work.
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