This time Mr. Bates, who wields a facile pen, has taken up a facile subject, for the burden of his story is the evolution of a young man’s love in the cool shades and sylvan retreats of Campobello.... Incidentally he pictures certain aspects of society and gives a fair account of Campobello. A Lad’s Love is a readable story, and young women will read it not only with pleasure but also with profit. It will teach them how love acts in a pure lad.—The Beacon.
Arlo Bates is favorably known as a writer of pleasant and healthy verse, and he appears to equal advantage as the author of this bright novel, which is as breezy as the air of Mount Desert, where the scene is laid. The “Lad” is a youth of twenty-two or so, just through Harvard; and the depth, strength, and variety of his love are well illustrated by his frantic passion for a widow old enough to be his mother, by his rapid transfer of affection to her lovely daughter, and by his nearly getting entangled with a third woman before he secures the right one. There is a thorough-bred air about the book which leaves a good impression, and a liveliness of fancy and description which promises more good stories from Mr. Bates’s pen. The minor characters, though merely sketched in lightly, fill their places admirably, and the two heroines are quite delicious.—Pittsburgh Bulletin.
The author delights in making an analytical study of the mental condition of the principal actors at various stages of the story, and now and then brightens the pages with a crisp epigram that betrays a habit of close observation of human nature in the lines of the story’s theme.... The people of the story are lifelike, however, and there is not an impossible nor even an improbable person among them.—Springfield Union.
Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
Poems by Arlo Bates.
Including “BERRIES OF THE BRIER,” and “SONNETS IN SHADOW.”