The Diary of a Dreamer. By Alice Dew-Smith. (T. Fisher
Unwin. es.)—This book contains forty-five very short and very slight essays or articles of the type of which we see sufficient in the evening papers. Some of them are amusing, —particularly those which deal with the taking and furnishing of a new house. The writer and her husband go to see a sad-looking, empty build- ing which seems to assume a sort of pathetic personality, and to ask them to take it. "It was out of the thoroughfare of human affairs. No one took any notice of it, nor spoke to it, not even the baker's boy." The animals who, when the house is finished, live in and around it are charming. The "idle, loafing ducks," the "businesslike hens," the bulldog, the cat, the bright-eyed birds, and the tortoise are all very well described. The eyes of the latter are said to "have about as much expression as a stagnant pond." The prettiest piece of writing in the book describes the last night of the old year, when the silence is broken by a slight rustling among the fir-trees in the garden, as if all the world were turning over new leaves.
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