Wit and Pleasure. Seven Tales, by Seven Authors. (Virtue.)— It
is aftwe our duty to complain of tales for being too long. This does not mean that we like them to be very short. In a very short story— as short as must be necessary when seven are to be included in one volume—there is no time or space far the careful working-out of any of the qualities that go to make up a really good novel. Still, these seven tales are good of their kind. Each contains a point, and each, in its way, has some force. " Thoroughbred" is, perhaps, the best. "Uncle Archie's Bankruptcy" is certainly the most improbable. The history of human eccentricity, of course, can match Uncle Archie'e way of testing his relative's worth. Is there not on record the true story of a man who left his home and spent twenty years in watching his wife from lodgings in the next street ? But such things are not subjects for art.
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