Annals of the Horseshoe Club. By Finch Mason. (Chatto and
Windus. 6s.)—Here we have eighteen stories, more or less of the sporting kind, which have been told, it is supposed, in a tavern club-room. The first is not a happy specimen. It takes the writer nearly fifty pages to relate that a nomination for the Derby, voided, it was thought, by the death of the nominator, turned out to be valid. All are not beaten out so thin as this, but there is not much in any of them, and the style is verbose,— debt, e.g., is pecuniary embarrassment. We have said more than once that these collections of short stories run a great risk of failing to please. The tales are meant to be read one by one, and will scarcely please when they are taken in the lump. They fare worse when they are all of one kind, and are at a still greater dis- advantage when they have to do with an ignoble class of subjects. If there is an exception to our censure, it is "Just in Time," which has some genuine human interest about it.
Previous page
