_A POSTHUMOUS STORY._
By HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).
"The story is complete in spite of the fact that a few chapters
remained still to be written when the writer succumbed to disease.
Begun and mainly completed at Los Angeles last year, the manuscript
had been put by to be completed when returning health should have
made continuous labor possible. But health never returned; the
disease steadily deepened its hold, and a few days before her
death, foreseeing that the end was near, Mrs. Jackson sent the
manuscript to her publisher, with a brief note, enclosing a short
outline of the chapters which remained unwritten.... The real
lesson of the book lies in Zeph's unconquerable affection for his
worthless wife, and in the beautiful illustration of the divine
trait of forgiveness which he constantly manifested toward her. As
a portraiture of a character moulded and guided by this sentiment,
'Zeph' will take its place with the best of Mrs. Jackson's work; a
beautiful plea for love and charity and long-suffering, patience
and forgiveness, coming from one whose hand now rests from this and
all kindred labors."--_New York Christian Union._
"Although the beautiful and pathetic story of Zeph' was never quite
completed, the dying author indicated what remained to be told in
the few unwritten chapters, and it comes to us, therefore, not as a
curious fragment, but as an all but finished work. There is
something most tender and sad in the supreme artistic
conscientiousness of one who could give such an illustration of
fidelity and so emphasize the nobility of labor from her death-bed.
These things that bring back the gracious spirit from whose loss
the heart of the reading world is still smarting, would lend pathos
and interest to 'Zeph' even if they did not exist in the story
itself. The creation of 'Zeph' is a fitting close to a life of
splendid literary activity, and it will be enjoyed by those who
believe in the novel as, first of all, a work of art, which can be
made in proper hands a tremendous force for truth and justice, and
real instead of formal righteousness."--_New York Commercial
Advertiser._
"As people grow older they see more and more clearly that love--the
love between man and woman--is the great power that shapes
character, and makes life a blessing, a burden, or a curse. More
and more deeply did Mrs. Jackson feel the omnipotence of perfect,
patient love, the only power that is sure of final victory, and to
show this did she tell the story of Zeph. Before the story was
finished, Mrs. Jackson became too ill to work any more; but the
life of Zeph was very near her heart; she wanted to make it known,
to impress the lesson, that through knowledge of a great forgiving
human love even the saddest and most sinful creature may come to a
faith in a great forgiving divine love, in a God as good as she has
known a man to be, and so in her last hours Mrs. Jackson made a
brief outline of the plot for the end of the story. As her latest
work, this has a special and pathetic interest."--_Boston Daily
Advertiser._
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