A MEDLEY BOOK.
A Medley Book. By George Frost. (Longmans and Co. 3s. 64.) —This little volume of essays and stories has many of the characteristics of the previous work from the same pen, "Where is Your Husband ? " It consists of several studies in minor and practical ethics bearing such titles as " Worry " and "Shopping,". and three short stories,—" What Mrs. Dunne Knew," "Forgiveness," and "Cupid's Blunder." The essays are notable mainly for their vigour, common-sense, and what Americans call "healthy-mindedness." Take, for example, this remark on " Worry " :—" Cannot a sense of humour help us? Fools, bores, small dilemmas, and other people's crotchets may justify a smile ; they cannot excuse a worry. Slight mis- understandings call for the leaven of a generous common-sense, and are not worth the brooding care we give them. Humour is the sense of right perspective. It reveals things as they are, here and there in their red-hot stage, and as they rarely appeal to less clear-sighted people till Time has polished their spectacles." As a story-writer" George Frost" is more successful in pathos than in fun. Her" Cupid's Blunder" is somewhat conventionally farcical; but the story of a mother's love for an erring son is told again in "A Forgiveness" with a freshness which tempers its poignancy. "What Mrs. Dunne Knew" is a pai nful and eerie story of a husband's posthumous revenge on the " first love" of his wife, whom she marries on becoming a widow. Although painful, it is also powerful. Clever and interesting as well as earnest, and from the literary point of view eminently conscientious, as are the two works of "George Frost," some day she will give the public better work than anything she has yet written.
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