Thirteen Doctors. By Mrs. T. K. Spender. (A. D. Innes
and Co.)—Anybody desiring a companionable volume for a railway journey is likely to find his requirements met by Thirteen Doctors which purports to be a collection of anecdotes of personal experience related to Mrs. Spender by various medical men of her acquaintance. The stories are so nearly level in point of merit, that the comparative preference accorded to them will probably depend a good deal on the individual tastes of the reader; but they are all readable, and mostly indicate a moral of some kind. Writers of fiction, for instance, may learn caution about discussing unpublished ideas with other people, from "A Dramatic Entertainment," which recounts how a poor lady was defrauded of the renown justly due to her, and also of all interest in life, by an unscrupulous nephew who profited by her misplaced confidence in him to appropriate the materials from which she was constructing a novel, and fore- stall her by giving them to the world in the form of a play. And husbands and stepfathers may perhaps find hints for their guidance in " Breaking her to Harness." and " A Managing Daughter." How much of the book is derived from facts, and how much from imagination, we cannot take upon ourselves to say ; but we should like here to add an expression of sincere regret for Mrs. Spender's death, which occurred a day or two after the above notice was written.
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