"Dear Miss DOLLIE RADFORD," writes the Assistant-Reader, "I trust I am
right in the feminine and unconjugal prefix; but, be that as it may, I
wish simply to tell you that, at the instigation of a lettered friend,
I have spent a few moments very wisely in reading your thin little
book of verse, _A Light Load_. (ELKIN MATHEWS.) I feel now as if I had
been gently drifting down a smooth broad river under the moonlight,
when all nature is quiet. I don't quite know why I feel like that,
but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality
in your poems. Here, then, there are sixty-four little pages of
restfulness for those whose minds are troubled. You don't plunge
into the deep of metaphysics and churn it into a foam, but you perch
on your little bough and pipe sweetly of gorse and heather and wide
meadows and brightly-flashing insects; you sing softly as when, in
your own words--
"--gently this evening the ripples break
On the pebbles beneath the trees,
With a music as low as the full leaves make,
When they stir in some soft sea-breeze."
One of my "Co." says he always reads anything that comes in his way
bearing the trade-mark BLACKWOOD. His faith has been justified on
carrying off with him on a quiet holiday, _His Cousin Adair_, by
GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including
the perhaps rarest one of literary style. _Cousin Adair_ is well worth
knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against
this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in
two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met
with in this wicked world. But _Cousin Adair_ is good enough to leaven
the lump. GORDON ROY is evidently a _nom de plume_ that might belong
to man or woman. My "Co." is inclined to think, from certain subtle
touches, that he has been entertained through three volumes by a lady.
BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.
[Illustration: A Puff to swell the Sale.]
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