READABLE NOVELS
"ON, Pioneers ! " should be the motto of Miss Goodman Salverson's story, The Viking Heart (Brentano's, 7s. 6d.). The description of the Norse spirit in Canada during the Icelandic emigration of 1876 is interesting, and the primitiveness of the conditions will be a surprise to most English readers. The pre- liminary account of the eruption of the volcano in Iceland is also extremely well done. The novel is, however, a little dis- jointed, and the interest shifts rather excessively. But if it is a first novel, as we think from the title-page, Miss Salverson should have a successful future before her. * * * Mrs. Arthur Stallard devotes the pages of her new novel, The Uttermost (John Murray, 7s. 6d.) to an indictment of Spiritualism, which she appears to have decided to be a product of the Devil in propria persona. The arguments by which the heroine differentiates between the voices which come down from heaven and those which come up from hell are not par- ticularly convincing ; but there seems to be no doubt that, for persons of weak mind, attendance at spiritualistic seances is a dangerous pastime. * * * Mr. Victor Bridges tells in The Girl in Black (Mills and Boon, 7s. 6d.), in a breezy and humorous style, the story of certain adventures which occur due to a conversation overheard in a cinema. It is an amusing Miller set in London.
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