“The text is interesting and at times absorbing. A vein of good nature and social enjoyment is distinctly visible throughout it.”
| + + | Nation. 80: 56. Ja. 19, ‘05. 1190w. |
“A volume of great interest and considerable value. There can be no two opinions of Mr. Thomas’s fitness for the accomplishment of the task he undertook in compiling and editing these recollections, for during a quarter of a century he was a worker with and a close friend of Sir John Robinson. The whole book, though a disappointment to those of us who expected a carefully prepared, witty, instructive volume of memoirs written by the chieftain’s own hand and with proofs corrected and revised by him, is nevertheless one that we have every reason to feel grateful to Mr. Frederick Moy Thomas for having compiled and edited.” Elizabeth Banks.
| + + — | N. Y. Times. 10: 49. Ja. 28, ‘05. 2330w. |
Robinson, Rowland Evans. Hunting without a gun, and other papers. $2. Forest & stream.
A posthumous volume of sketches and stories in which the blind writer tells of the joys of the lover of nature, who seeks the creatures of the woods, but does not harm them.
| + | N. Y. Times. 10: 407. Je. 17, ‘05. 380w. | |
| Outlook. 80: 392. Je. 10, ‘05. 30w. |
Robinson, Rowland Evans. Out of bondage. $1.25. Houghton.
Seventeen short dialect stories, many of which have already appeared in various magazines, are collected under this title. “Out of bondage” is a story of the “underground” railroad, in which a Quaker family save an escaped negro from his pursuers. A little Quaker maid and her lover, and a revengeful disappointed admirer complicate the plot. “A letter from Hio,” is another idyll of country life, with a simple love motive. “The shag back panther,” a creation of an old Canuck, frightens its inventor from the berry patch. “A story of the old frontier” is an account of an Indian’s gratitude in liberating a woman who had nursed him. Altho the subjects are varied, they all concern men, animals, and country life. The treatment is mainly humorous.
“The very rusticity of his humor increases the verisimilitude of his portrait.”