Princess Penniless. By S. R. Crockett. (Hodder and Stoughton. 6s.)—We
can speak with almost unmixed praise of Mr. Crockett's new story as far as concerns what is by much the greater portion of it. Hubert Salveson has a hard time. He has had a medical training, but his father, who has a theological bee in his bonnet, will not suffer him to work. Then by good luck he meets the "Princess," and she sets him in the way of making himself a man. All the process of making is told with admirable force. The one thing that jars is the frequency of the jests about sacred or quasi-sacred things with which Mr. Crockett enlivens his pages. It is the latter part of the story which we do not like. If Mr. Crockett had been writing a " gift-book " tale, we should not have had it. He would have been content, and his readers would have been more than content, with the tale of Hubert's growth, and of how the growing came about. But he is writing a novel,, and we must have a complication. Edith, now a wife and mother, with the most devoted of husbands, becomes frantically jealous of a very spirited and handsome girl who has been brought to the Salveson home with a quite futile idea of marrying her to Hubert's faineant brother. It is possible that some women are made so, but the thing does not seem to suit what we are told about Edith, and it is needless. Mr. Crockett would certainly not have inflicted the episode on young readers. Does ho really think it attractive to their elders ?
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