MISS JAMES ABROAD.*
ONE regrets that Miss James should have found it necessary to prefix her photograph to this most agreeable volume. Not that there is any fault to he found with the picture itself, but Miss James, above all people, can afford to dispense with what is, after all, only an illegitimate solicitation of the reader's favour. For she has the invaluable faculty of being able to put herself on paper with her pen. One would know what she is like without any photograph. It is typical of her that she calls her collection of travel sketches, not " An English- woman in the West Indies " or " From Port-au-Prince to Panama," but The Mulberry Tree—a title the relevance of which we have no space to investigate here. It is the same with the people she meets and the places she visits. All must come under her Mulberry Tree. The reader must not expect any elaborate word-painting or any close analysis of life and customs. He must approach the book as Miss James did the fascinating countries it describes, simply for entertainment, and he may be sure of being admirably entertained. For, if her grasp is not very comprehensive, Miss James's appreciation of life is inexhaustible. She flits from point to point with infinite zest. And she has the power (which Mark Twain had above all other writers) of making words amusing. The book is full of honest pleasure, honestly communicated, and it has its moments of romance and of earnestness also. As to the latter, we may not perhaps always find our author quite so effective in this vein. But even here we need not be too critical. We can pardon a little superficiality, a little commonplace, for on this side, as well as on the other, the writer's sincerity is always unmistakable.
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