CURRENT LITERATURE.
Look Here : a Book for the Rail. By Charles Searle. (Field and Taer.)—This is a book of "wise and witty" sayings, and we think that the author would have done well to have kept in mind one of
their number in the coarse of his work. "I knew a man once," he writes, "who had a little wit ; but because he laid claim to a great deal, people would not admit that he had any." We mean to say that his collection includes so many indifferent sayings, that possibly
enough some readers will be slow to note the really excellent ones which are to be found scattered here and there. We will extract a few of the shorter and lighter ones for quotation :— "Repentance.—An impression that we have not been lucky sinners. Poor relation.—An institution supported by involuntary con- tributions.
Amateur Theatricals.—Selfish device of the few to torture the many. 219 people getting into society.—If you give dinners, you show whom you know ; if you give parties, you show whom you don't."
There are about a hundred sayings of this quality, and our advice to Mr. Searle is to publish these in his second edition, and to omit the remaining four hundred—which, though in some cases clever, have not the smartness or terseness of expression requisite for the class of book to which this belongs.
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