TALES.—My Land of Beulah. By Mrs. Leith Adams. (Methuen and
Co.)—This is a love-story of a not unusual pattern. A single- hearted young woman, and a friend who is certainly not so, are the leading characters. A cloud arises between the honest girl and her lover, and this at last is cleared away. That is a very bare epitome of a story which is told, and not told to advantage, in the first person. There is far too much running comment, self- reproach, and so forth. We did not find My Land of Beulah up to the average of its author's work.—Deck-Chair Stories. By Richard Pryce. (Ward and Downey.)—Here are eight stories, some of them appearing for the second time, which, for want of a better epithet. we may describe as of the " detective " kind. It is not that we find an actual detective in all, hut there is a suggestion of mystery in all. Mr. Pryce makes ingenious plots, and writes with force.—Stories of Old and New Spain. By Thomas A. Janvier. (J. R. Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co.)— These are stories in which, as the title may indicate, there is a good deal of the "rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle." They are powerful tales of the tragic sort. Readers who like to have their heart-strings wrung will not be disappointed. —Dr. and Mrs. Gold. By Edith A. Barnett. (Swan Sonnen- sehein and Co.)—This "episode in the life of a cause" is a vigorously written picture of one side of the inner life of the Nihilist or anarchist community which is working in many places, in London especially, for the upsetting of what is, and the bringing about, as is doubtless the sincere hope of many, of a better time to come. The special subject, indeed, is the conflict in a woman's mind as to whether she shall surrender her individual life, or that which makes it valuable, to the "cause," or rather, to a very worthless person who typifies it to her. One lesson to be learnt from it is certainly of the incalculable value which the law of marriage, old-fashioned as some learned professors and others think it, is to women.
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