Twelfth Street Meeting and Uncle Joseph both treat of the bashful Quaker in love, with a quiet humor and an effective but unobtrusive description of Quaker customs. The Two Gentlewomen were once Friends; but one of them having become the widow of a fast young Englishman, they both take up the ways of the mother country. A courtly old colonel courts them both with rare impartiality. Our Little Neighbors is a sympathetic picture of childhood, with a quaintly humorous ending. Even more humorous is Pamelia Tewksbury's Courtship, laid in central New York. Mrs. Gardner's treatment of this episode, though it recalls Miss Wilkins, can well bear the comparison. Next come the Ante-Bellum Letters, which occupy about a third of the book and make an excellent foil to the more demure tales which they interrupt like a sort of vigorous interlude. The Quakeress who writes them is suddenly plunged into the comparative dissipations of Boston, into the lively society of Harvard undergraduates, and into gay raiment that distresses her; but this lively intermezzo ends with a graver strain. The figures of the great Abolitionists are faintly seen, and at the trial of a poor negro boy, who is demanded as a fugitive slave, Lucretia Mott appears and sits by the prisoner, cheering him through the long night session of the court. The frontispiece represents this scene. The book closes with a quaint old story, way back in 1815, in which a romantic French boy, escaped from jail, and a Quakeress, more beautiful than her parents care to have her, figure prominently. There is a deep note of pathos in this tale, and the good influence of the Quakers in prison reform is shown, as their brave work for abolition has been in the Ante-Bellum Letters. Here and there a few lines give remarkable nature-pictures, as in the following:
"The midsummer heat was upon the land. The red sun set in splendor, and the blood-red moon rose as in wrath."
Jerome's John Ingerfield;
The Woman of the Saeter, Silhouettes, Variety Patter, and The Lease of the Cross-keys. The title-story (half the book) and the two that follow are in serious vein. With portrait of Jerome and illustrations. Small 16mo. 75 cents.
"This dainty little volume, contrived to look like a tall folio in miniature ... the creepy Norwegian ghost story (The Woman of the Saeter) ... the vague but picturesque sketch called Silhouettes.... The first (John Ingerfield) is a very sweet and pathetic love story ... true to the best there is in human nature ... many diverse traits of character and striking incidents being compressed within its narrow limits.... It is a good thing to write an honest, wholesome, old-fashioned love story like John Ingerfield."—New York Times.
"Rare combination of true pathos and thoroughly modern humor."—The Churchman.
"Variety Patter and The Lease of the Cross-keys are in lighter vein; the former having delicious humorous touches, and the latter being in its entirety a very clever conceit"—Boston Times.
"A charming story."—Literary World.
"A charming little story."—London Athenæum.