6. DISSERTATIONS BY MR. D. (Harper). 6s.
7. MR. DOOLEY SAYS. (Heinemann). 3s. 6d. 1910.
A series of fictitious conversations purporting to take place over the counter of his bar in Archey Road, a seedy Irish quarter of New York, between Mr. Dooley, “traveller, historian, social observer, saloon-keeper, economist, and philosopher,” who has not been out of his ward for twenty-five years “but twict,” and his friend Hennessy. From the cool heights of life in the Archey Road Mr. Dooley muses, philosophizes, moralizes on the events and ideas of the day. He talks in broad brogue (perhaps overdone), but his sayings are full of dry humour, and the laugh is always with him. Many of these sayings have the point and brevity of epigrams. No ridicule is cast on Irish character, with which the Author, himself an Irishman, obviously sympathizes. The view of politics, &c., is wholly at variance with that which comes to us from the English Press.
DUNNE, F. W.
⸺ THE PIRATE OF BOFINE: an historical romance. Three Vols. 12mo. (London). 1832.
A strange medley of melodramatic episodes. The story jumps from place to place in the most bewildering way, and wholly without warning to the reader. Scene laid in various parts of the W. of I. (Boffin, Galway, Bantry, &c.) in reign of Henry VIII. Historical characters are introduced, but without historical background. Style: “Know you aught of my maternal parent.” (Vol. III., p. 15). “Fire flashed from his eyes, and death sat upon his gleaming blade,” and soforth.
“EBLANA,” [see ROONEY].
ECCLES, Charlotte O’Connor; “Hal Godfrey.” Died 1911. Was a daughter of A. O’C. Eccles, of Ballingard Ho., Co. Roscommon. She wrote first for Irish periodicals. Later she went to London, and became a prominent lady journalist there. Her The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore is a very clever and witty novel.
⸺ ALIENS OF THE WEST. Pp. 351. (Cassell). 6s. 1904.
Six stories reprinted from the American Ecclesiastical Review (Catholic), and the Pall Mall Magazine. Scene: “Toomevara,” an Irish country town of about 2,000 inhabitants, near Shannon estuary. Life in this town is depicted in a realistic and objective way, without moralizing, and without obtrusive religious or political bias. Yet there are lessons—the miseries of class distinctions and of social and religious cleavage; the disasters of education above one’s sphere (even in a convent). There is much pathos in the death of the peasant boy-poet, and in the faithfulness of the servant girl to the fallen fortunes of the family. A serious and earnest book.