17 DECEMBER 1892, Page 23

Her Saddest Blessing. By Jennie Chappell. (Partridge.)—This is, on the

whole, a rather commonplace, though well-told and effective, story. At all events, we think we have heard before of some such blessing in disguise as that which befalls Olive Chester, in the shape of a fall downstairs on the morning of her marriage, It injures her spine, but deprives her of an undesirable lover in Edgar Plaford, and so makes room for the right man in the person of Dr. Royal Fyrecourt. At the same time, all the desirable acquaintances whom one makes in the pages of Her Saddest Blessing become more truly religious at the end than they were at the beginning, thanks chiefly to strokes either of good or of evil fortune. The story is a trifle too long, but otherwise it is a decidedly superior one of its kind.