From Morn till eve. By Emelie Dunford. (Digby, Long, and
Co.)—Here is a story of which it must be mournfully said that the trail of the amateur is over it all. It is visible in the smallest details, especially in the manifestations of the amateur's un- willingness or inability to call a spade a spade, and his ardent passion for cheap periphrases of the "implement of husbandry" order, the latter being always framed in quotation-marks, so that no one may miss them. Thus, the sea is the "briny ocean," London is the "big city" of "Morrie England," and were there a fire in the book, it would of course figure as the " devouring element." It is, however, in the structure of the tale that amateurishness is most distressingly obvious. There is the utterly worn-out expedient of a mock-marriage, performed by a bogus clergyman, not in a church but in his own private apart- ments ; and the victim of this stale scoundrelism is not the traditional village maiden, but a wide-awake and educated young woman, whose ignorance is ridiculously incredible. Then, of course, her lover deserts her, and the forlorn damsel becomes a nurse in a hospital, whither her deceiver is brought in a dying condition to express his penitence, and to atone for his wrong by a bed-side marriage. The story is absurd from first to last, and the author's stilted manner of telling it throws all the details of absurdity into high relief.
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