Colonel Carter of Cartersville. By F. Hopkinson Smith. (Osgood and
Co.)—This is not so much a story as a delightful—and delightfully American—character-sketch, executed in a style which here and there recalls Thackeray. Colonel Carter, indeed, is a sort of Southern Tom Newcome, with iron-grey hair, deep-set,. twinkling eyes, a soft, low voice, an ill-buttoned, shiny, black broadcloth coat, and a voice that is "soft and low and tempered with a cadence that is delicious." Luckier than Tom Newcome, but quite as simple, the sun of his life would probably have gone down in misery and poverty—although of poverty he has no fear
— had not his friends, including a marvellous Aunt Nancy and an equally marvellous negro servant Chad, entered into a sort of con- spiracy to put him on his feet, in which they are aided by st discovery of coal on a property which, if not exactly the Colonel's, is at his service. The Colonel's dinner-party, the Colonel's duel
— every incident of his story, indeed—is, in no conventional sense, a perfect work of art. If Mr. Hopkinson Smith is a new writer, and not an old one with a new nom de plume, he has evidently a future before him.
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