THE NOVEL-READER'S VADE MECUM.
Question. I believe you are a very rapid reader of fiction?
Answer. Certainly. My average rate is three and a half volumes a day. This gives me plenty of time for meals, sleep and skipping.
Through Booking, First-Class and otherwise.
Q. Do you skip a great deal?
A. A very great deal. For instance, I have skipped about two-thirds of Isa, by the Editor of the North-Eastern Daily Gazette, in spite of it being only in a couple of volumes, and containing for an introduction the following rather lengthy sentence:—"If the devil were in a laughing mood, what could seem more grimly humorous to him than the vision of a fair young spirit striving consciously after ethereal perfection, but overweighted unconsciously by the bonds and fetters of human infirmity and passion, and dragged at last headlong down the abysmal descent to perdition?" "Abysmal" is good—very good.
Q. Well, and what of the book itself?
A. Chiefly horrors. Nightmare after a pork-chop supper I fancy. Nelly Jocelyn (Widow), is a welcome contrast. One of the best things Miss Jean Middlemass has done. The character of Paul Cazalet capitally drawn and foreign local colouring admirable.
Q. What do you think of His Own Enemy?
A. Fancy the title somehow must refer to the Author. Clerical sketches full of unconscious humour. Two volumes but very big ones. Quite a relief to get to A False Start,—by Hawley Smart, which is most entertaining. But in this case the name of the Author is a safe guarantee for something worth reading.
Q. What do you think of A Modern Circe?
A. I fancy it is not quite so good as Molly Brown, by the same Author.
Q. What do you know of Molly Brown?
A. Nothing—I have not read it.
Q. What have you to say about Scamp?
A. That it is by the Author of The Silent Shadow, which I fancy must be the sequel of another novel called The Garrulous Ghost. In the first chapter the heroine Scamp, (a young lady) is discovered up a tree from which coign of vantage she throws a yellow-paper-covered novel at the gardener's head.
Q. The first chapter then must be vastly entertaining?
A. Vastly. I am absolutely dying to read the chapters that follow it, and will—some day.
Q. What is Brother or Lover about? A. I don't know—do you?
Q. This is trifling! Pray describe Out of Tune.
A. Ought to have been called Out of Paganini—founded upon that distinguished fiddler's life, although (as the Author says) "it is necessarily speculative as to its details."
Q. Have you read In the King's Service?
A. Some of it. Fancy it deals with the Peninsular War.
Q. How about Jill and Jack?
A. Book I imagine written before the title. Rather hard work to get up the hill which ends with the last chapter.
Q. What is Hidden in my Heart?
A. Seemingly the words which finish the third volume, "It is two years now since Hubert died, and to-morrow is my second wedding-day."
Q. Is this the first novel that the Authoress has written?
A. Oh dear no. She has also published Out of Eden, Quite True, and a book which apparently refers to the late-in-life "finishing" of an uneducated ecclesiastic called The Vicar's Governess.
Q. Don't you think that you are rather hard upon the novelists?
A. I hope not. I am sure I owe them a deep, deep debt of gratitude.
Q. How so? A. Without them I should be a victim to insomnia.
