For Such is Life. By Silas K. Hocking. (Frederick Warne
and Co.)—This book is quite characteristic of its author, who has obtained a very considerable reputation and a large clientele by a series of fictions that are written with undoubted vigour and that teach a not ignoble morality by precept rather than by example. Wrong-doing, vindictiveness, love, hatred, reparation, remorse, and forgiveness, —these, the old " features " of the repertoire of the novelist with a purpose, are again reproduced in Peter Trefusa, Abram Fowey, and their relatives and friends, who all figure in a drama which is also fortunate in having some of its scenes laid in Australia and others in England. The contrast between Peter Trefusa, the grasping man who is yet capable of very sharp practice indeed, and Abram Fowey, the essen- tially good and even strong man whom he defrauds and would crush if he could, is admirably brought out. The "idyllic" part of the story, however, is distinctly weak. It is quite in accordance with nature, perhaps, that Edward Trefusa should just fall tepidly in love with his cousin Mona, and then violently in love with Dorothy Grey, who is all but engaged to a good man of the " Connexion " order, and bearing the eminently respectable if commonplace name of Smith. But it is, perhaps, rather too much of a good thing for Mona to oblige Edward by falling in love with his foster-brother Ned Fowey. There is, too, an air of positively puerile unreality about the literary struggles of Edward and Dorothy in London. Altogether, however, For Such is Life is the sort of book that will be appreciated by readers who take the view of life that is presented by "Annie S. Swan," but who like fiction of a more vigorous sort than the ordinary novels of that popular writer.
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