A First Family of Tasajara. By Bret Harte. 301 pp. Cloth, $1.25. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 1892.
The charm of Bret Harte's stories lies in their originality of conception, their well-defined local color, and the chaste richness of their literary style. The power to pique one's interest to the last page belongs to Mr. Harte above all other writers of stories of American life. His latest book has all the good qualities of its predecessors. It tells a perfectly natural story of life in California. The hero is a newspaper man; the other characters are a man who makes a big "strike" in land, and becomes suddenly rich, his two daughters, a newspaper proprietor with an axe to grind and a secret love, a beautiful and rich Boston widow, and a civil engineer. The denouement is startling, being none other than the wiping out by a flood of the town which made the rich man's fortune, and the lesson of the story is the suddenness with which in the West riches have been made, and also lost.
L. F.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
[All books sent to the editor of The Writer will be acknowledged under this heading. They will receive such further notice as may be warranted by their importance to readers of the magazine.]
Paragraph-writing, With Appendices on Newspaper Style and Proof-reading. By Fred N. Scott, Ph. D., and Joseph V. Denney, A. B. 107 pp. Stiff paper. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Register Publishing Company. 1891.
The Principles of Style. By Fred N. Scott, Ph. D. 51 pp. Stiff paper. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Register Publishing Company. 1891.