Herbert Severance. By M. French-Sheldon. (Saxon and Co.)— Mr. or
Mrs., or Miss French-Sheldon, has given to the world a very absurd and worthless story, which would be also a very tire- some story were it not rendered amusing by its remarkable literary style. It is written throughout in the new American language, which is a caricature of English, recklessly peppered with minute fragments of curious French, the accentuation or non-accentuation of which suffices to make it noteworthy. One of the principal characters is a young man whose "lineaments, taken from a critical point of view, were massive in their inherent qualities," while his "grey-green eyes, shadowed with long bronze eyelashes" [bronze eyelashes is good] "seemed to change colour like chameleons. Actually the thing they looked upon, mentally or objectively" [we quote, but do not pretend to explain] "imparted a vivid hue and reflection of itself to their singularly mottled, ciliary lines, and the white of the balls was translucent, opaline—they were at once the eyes of a tiger and the eyes of a dove." Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that a person with such very exceptional eyes possessed also a mouth which, "when overcast by a smile, betrayed a nature teeming with humanity and passionate im- pulses," or that the only "flaw in his physique was developed during moments of wrapt (sit) meditation." These are fair samples of the writer's style. Of the story itself it is only neces- sary to say that the adventures of the young man described above are much duller than they have any right to be.
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