The Mermaid. By L. Dougall. (Richard Bentley and Bon.)— Eccentricity
is the chief characteristic of this undoubtedly in- genious story, which deals almost entirely with a region—the north-west coast of Prince Edward's Island—which, up to the present time, fiction has left severely alone. The secret of the mermaid, or rather of the girl who personates a mermaid, is kept a little too long, and the adventures of the queer young doctor, Caius Simpson, before he finds the woman whom, unconsciously rather than consciously, he is in search of, are rather too much spun out. There is, of course, a woman in the story,—the girl who plays the mermaid, and who in the middle of the story appears as a married woman with an odious husband. Finally, there is a masterful and even murderous man, O'Shea, who is destined to rid Josephine Le Maitre of the odious husband, and apparently to leave her to marry Caius. Altogether, The Mermaid is a book of promise or possibility rather than of performance.
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