The Shady Side and the Sunny Side. Two New England
Stories. By Two Country Ministers' Wives. (Sampson Low.)—These are two tales of the "Queeclay " class, not quite so good as that book, but still fairly readable, and interesting as pictures of a life which offers many points both of resemblance and of contrast to that which answers to it among ourselves. To us they are disfigured, as to others doubtless they will be made attractive, by a religious phraseology, in which there is much that we do not like and not a little that we do not understand. The most valuable part in both of them is the picture which they exhibit of the relations which exist in money matters between the ministers and their congregations. The writers of course know better than any one else where- the shoe pinches, and possibly they exaggerate the discomfort ; but it must anyhow be bad enough, worse, we should say, than what is com- monly to be found in England. Some English ministers probably know what it is to have hard bargains driven with them, but we have never heard of their being afflicted with the " truck " system, which the ingenuity of the New Englanders has contrived to apply to their- ministers. We should say that it was an unheard-of thing here for a- man to pay his pow-rent with a sack of " speckly " potatoes. Altogether the tales are pleasantly written and are worth reading. The first of the. two is, we should say, the best.
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