Suchlike things come easy as pie
To the author, Mr. Cunninghame Graham,
And I quite like 'em so long as I
Have only to read and not to say 'em.
If 'tis love that makes the world go round, it is certainly the same force that maintains the circulation of the libraries. So it is safe to assume that such a title as The Little Blind God (Melrose) is itself enough to preserve the volume that bears it from any wallflower existence on the less frequented shelves. But as for the story to which Miss Anne Weaver has given this attractive name I find it very difficult to say anything, good or bad. Only once did its placid unfolding cause me any emotion, even the mildest. Old Lady Conyers had adopted as companion one Mistress Barbara Cardeen (need I interpolate that the time is the eighteenth century? O brocade and lavender! O swords and candle-light and general tushery!), whom she found playing a violin in the streets of Bath—I should say the Bath; let us above all things be atmospheric! As her ladyship had a most eligible son, and as Barbara—the chit!—naturally hadn't a guinea, I own I was slightly astonished to find the dowager positively hurling the young couple at each other's heads. However, doubtless Lady Conyers, as herself a novel-reader, knew that the thing was inevitable anyway. But before this there were of course the misunderstandings. Mistress Barbara had, in the violin days, a half-brother and this gentleman very obligingly turns up incognito at Conyers End, and even goes to the expense of hiring rooms in a cottage on the estate, for no other purpose in life than that his conspicuously clandestine meetings with the fair Barbara should be misconstrued as an assignation. Ha! out, rapiers! and let us be ready for the moment when Barbara, rushing between the combatants, receives in her own bosom the blade intended for——, etc. But of course not enough blade to endanger the happy ending. So there you are. A placid, undistinguished tale, that may be commended as nourishment or soporific according to the taste and fancy of the reader.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF PRUSSIAN EFFRONTERY.
Officer of Zeppelin (in perfect English.) "Would you kindly direct me to the War Office?"