Holding On: a Tale for Boys. By J. T. Hopkins.
(Nelson and Sons.)—A good story this, with a moral well defined, but not obtruded. Wynt Havisham and his brother find themselves in a singular position by the sudden death of the uncle with whom they have been living. He dies in the endeavour to make it understood that he wishes his last will cancelled. This last will, indeed the only will found, leaves his property to a daughter, with a handsome provision for the nephews. The daughter insists that the testator's unfulfilled intention was to leave all to her, and abrogate the provision. Wynt accordingly throws up everything, and goes into a "store "—the scene is in the States—to earn his living. He "holds on" by his purpose ; he holds on in the store against sundry temptations of various kinds ; and then, by a sur- prise which we will not reveal, he finds that all unconsciously he has been acting to his own temporal advantage. We cannot help thinking that the tale would have been better without the intro- duction of the lawyer's meditated but not accomplished fraud.
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