A Double Cherry. By M. E. Winchester. (Seeley and Co.)—
This is a story of the painstaking kind that, without being obtrusively religious, are meant to " do good," and which Miss Winchester can produce with greater ease than almost any of her contemporaries. The two boys, Claude and Roy, who constitute the " double cherry," are the sons of a father who has seen better days, and their mission in this volume is to love and stand by each other at all hazards. The death of their father separates them, but only for a time, and enables them to undergo a discipline in which friends and enemies both play a part. The more sorely tried of the two brothers is the elder and robuster, Claude, for he is falsely accused of theft, and by way of punish- ment is made to spend a time on board the reformatory-ship, .1kbar.' He escapes, however ; Roy is enabled to join him, and all ends well and comfortably for them, through their discovery of an eccentric and miserly relative, the proprietor of a mysterious Hawk Hollow, and a muscular Christian of a clergyman, who turns out also to be Cousin Gerard. Both of the boys are well sketched, and so are their humble friends, Isaac, Ruth and Israel. Perhaps the story might have been judiciously compressed in parts. But otherwise it is as admirable in execution as it is wholesome in tendency. Miss Winchester is possessed of a power of Dickensian description which ought to stand her in good stead should she try more ambitious fiction than that of the kind of which A Double Cherry is so admirable a specimen.
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