Various

“ The thought of infinite and invincible energy gives character to Mrs. Sill’s poetry, whether it be the buoyancy of responsibility, the faith of hero worship, the lessons of bird and flower, or the perfection of love in its great limitless reaches. Whether in “sun or shade” she urges mankind to live, to act.
“There is not a morally unwholesome line in her whole work. The book, therefore, is one which the author may well feel proud of having produced and the reader thankful to possess.” ”

“ This new edition of an old story enables a new generation to revel in its dramatic scenes of love and mystery, in its graphic descriptions of the search for a stolen treasure, and to follow the many tangled threads of its plot to a happy ending. The cord of the title is one of curious Eastern manufacture, the creese is a Malay dagger, and the two form the principal clues in the search for the villain of this stirring tale.
“So far as style goes it is much superior to the novel of adventure of commerce, as put on the market to-day.” ”

“ To depict the life of a woman of this class in a lengthy narrative, without making her offensive, demands unusual insight into human nature.”—Sat. R.
“Her compromise between history and fiction is maintained throughout; she is always guiding herself by authentic facts, and her emotions are regulated by the documents at her side. And here lies the defect of the system. She cannot give her imagination free rein, and yet she may indulge it to such an extent that the reader does not know when he is reading history and when he is reading fiction. ”

“ At much damage to his reputation, the hero has stood by her and her husband through their worst days and now consoles the widow with a genuine friendship which the pair are content to let the world misunderstand. Sybil’s revenge upon fate is to draw young men under the blighting influence of her husband’s life and work, but having a real affection for the lawyer, she bestirs herself to find him a wife, judging that at forty, after an unsavoury career which has exhausted his resources, nothing else can secure him safety and happiness. ”

“ An ardent Southern girl brought up abroad refuses to be comforted when her father dies. “How can you believe in a God who punishes you and sends all manner of evil on you while calling himself a God of love” expresses the burden of her distracted mind. She loses her fortune, she falls from a horse and becomes a cripple. Life looks hard and bitter. To her, in this state comes the healing truth of Christian science with its deep revelations of the power that can bind up the broken hearted, make whole and restore harmony. ”

“ One who has long known and loved her, and who has always understood, writes here of the sea and her moods, of her anger when the winds lash her, of the fear of her, the charm of her, of the men in the good ships that sail her and sometimes go down in her, of their ways, their rugged courage, and the various phases of the lives they lead. There are bits of sentiment, scraps of romance, flashes of humor, many real dramatic scenes and much hard fact, and thru it all the sound of the sea. ”

“ There are many people more or less rich and more or less socially ambitious involved in the plot, but they are merely vivacious adjuncts to the story of Tolna and his love for Honor, the cold beauty who was his boyhood’s playmate, and or Denys Alden, the man who, having lost his own voice, rejoices in the triumphs of his protégé, living in his success until he even renounces to him Marjorie, the girl he loves, only to find that her heart is his, but not his to renounce. ”

“ Henry Sidgwick represented the most modern type of University teacher, the type which is closely in touch with all sides of national life and exercises an influence far beyond the lecture-room. He was a distinguished professor, a successful administrator, a writer of good books, but above all things he was a personality from whom radiated a subtle attraction which many felt and few could wholly describe.... It is almost impossible to reproduce for those who did not know him the charm of his character and the peculiar distinction of his mind. ”

“ The curtain that screens the sanctities of domestic life is drawn aside just enough to give us a glimpse of the fine, noble, sunny gentleman, an earnest Catholic, of high culture and simple tastes, ambitious only of a competence sufficient to guarantee him the opportunity to prosecute his work of study and composition, which he loved, not for the fame that it brought him, but for itself. ”

“ Love, intrigue and revolution in a South American state make a riotous setting for Mr. Oppenheim’s story. The man of the hour is a wealthy young Englishman who sides neither with the revolutionists nor yet with the president’s party, but is a friend to both. His Beau Desir, a fertile valley near the town, with two hundred Englishmen to till it would fain express the temper of his neutrality, but the disquieting elements of the town creep into it. There are lively quarrels, attempted murders, and thrilling escapes, all of which have local color and atmosphere. ”

“ The courage of the woman who relinquishes her claim on him is only surpassed by his energy in dispelling the illusion of insanity that holds the woman he loves.
“‘The eternal spring,’ forms a curious and not altogether satisfactory antithesis to ‘The forerunner,’ insomuch as its plot is a much more conspicuous feature than its human nature. It is not so fine a piece of art as the author’s earlier novel, not so fine even as her short stories.” ”

“ The conflicting traits and characteristics of Raffles and of Sherlock Holmes are strangely blended in this new hero, Raffles Holmes, who introduces himself as the grandson of the famous cracksman and the son of the great detective. His history and adventures as recorded by Jenkins, who is his Dr. Watson and his Bunny in one, are highly amusing. In the double capacity of thief and detective he enjoys a successful and spectacular career, for while the Raffles in him perpetually cries “Take” the Holmes in him thunders “Restore” and he does both to his own advantage. ”

“ However the untangled plot clears his character, the weakness of the past is forgotten in the strength of the present, and he wins the love of a younger daughter whom he has all along confused with the elder sister and wins also the respect of the community.
“‘Wholesome’ is the adjective that best expresses the quality of the book; and that quality is its chief charm. Talent it surely displays, but as yet it is the talent of the amateur, crude in spots, and more or less immature.” ”

“ A useful and suggestive introduction to the life of Johannes Brahms which appears uniform with the “Master musicians” series. “There are no stirring events to recount, no revolution, or hurling of artistic thunderbolts; his life is but a record of work, unswervingly pursued, and of a homely, simple life of quiet friendships, with rambles through Italy or Switzerland in holiday times, though these holidays were the opportunities for some of his best work, as is ever the case with a true artist.” ”

“ Desire, a musician by instinct, by training, and by heredity, spends a summer in British Columbia among the Indians, canoeing, sailing, mountain-climbing and fishing. Here she discovers in a young Alaska Indian, adopted and educated by white people, a soul fired by ambition and pride, one that reflects the sad poetry of vanishing traditions. The love idyll is interwoven with flagrant race prejudice, political scenes, and true-to-life sketches of Indian character. ”

“ Then comes the mouse, the daughter of the judge, who has already written a novel setting forth the character and financial methods of the lion to his disadvantage, and has also won the love of the lion’s only son. Thus armed she is the first of all human creatures who dares to defy the magnate, and she successfully gnaws the cords which tie up the plot and wins happiness for her father, her lover, and, incidentally, herself. ”

“ A book which makes no use of creeds nor faith, which believes that positive knowledge has displaced them both and also the idea of death, that origin and destiny are not beyond the grasp of mortals, that in the spirit world laws are fixed and are immutable, that dissolution is not annihilation but liberation and opportunity and that God is universal good and dwells in the heart of all mankind. ”

“ A young American while on a balloon-trip meets with an accident which leaves him on an unknown island among an unheard-of race of black creature whom he dubs “missing links.” His battles with ourangs, his tiger hunt with poisoned arrows of his own manufacture, his discovery of “the goddess,” and the perils incident to his fleeing with her back to civilization can satiate a large adventure appetite.
“This is a glorified dime novel of the blood-and-thunder genre. Will prove none the less interesting to the audience which the book aims to reach.” ”

“ Of the same old ingredients, an obscure corner of Europe, a revolution, a beautiful and throneless princess, and an adventurous American, the author has made a stirring and interesting tale. He carries his readers and his hero in a touring car from a New York club to Krovitch, an ancient kingdom on the borderland of Russia, where there is bloodshed and treachery, war and intrigue, in plenty. There the hero’s valet becomes a king, and the hero wins the love of a princess, Trusia, who after all is better fitted to be the wife of a wealthy New Yorker than mistress of a crumbling medieval castle. ”

“ The Court of love “where everybody has what he likes and likes what he has,” was naturally looked upon by the world as a lunatic asylum, but it was merely the whim of a girl who had not found happiness and who wished to make other people happy. ”

“ One feels compelled to protest against any confusion of the greatness of ‘Il santo’ as a piece of brilliant polemics, a powerful theological brief, with its worth as a novel. Frankly, it is not a great novel; it is too defective in technique, it lacks on the one hand the rugged simplicity of Verga, on the other the melodious rhythm and artistic proportions of d’Annunzio. ”

“ London, when he errs, does so on the side of flesh; there are moments even in his most powerful work, when one is prompted to say, ‘That is a false note: human nature is nobler than that!’” Frederic Taber Cooper. ”

“ All who knew Charles Godfrey Leland knew that the man was stronger than his work. It is this man that Mrs. Pennell draws for us. From her pages radiates a personality that refreshes and rejoices, a vitality that heartens, and invigorates the reader. Not but that the biographer, proud of her brilliant uncle, does her best to give some account of what he achieved. And here she serves him truly.... The biography is mainly the work of Leland’s own pen. ”

“ In with the politics is wound a story of men and women, of love and loss and hopes and fears, which displays a number of very cleverly drawn characters, whose thoughts and feelings are of deep interest. The soldier, by strange bonds that remain concealed until the very end, is united by close ties to the Viceroy himself—and the discovery adds pathos to the wretched muddle which everybody made of things. ”

“ The Sioux uprising in 1876 furnishes the main incidents for this story of Wyoming and Montana, and of Bob Hampton, a gambler and disgraced army officer, who saves the life of Naida, old Gillis’s girl, at the risk of his own, only to discover that she is his own daughter. He does not reveal himself to her however, but gives her up for the sake of her future, then quietly renounces his old life and keeps watch over her from afar. In the end he dies a brave death, leaving her an untarnished name and a gallant soldier lover. ”

“ No historian has done so much as Mr. Froude to interpret aright the English reformation and its great characters, no one so much to explain Henry VIII, and no one so much to dispel the romantic mystery which has enveloped the character and career of Mary Queen of Scots, who deserves to be ranked, as Froude’s realistic portraiture has ranked her, with Jezebel of Israel, Lucretia Borgia of Italy, and Catherine de’ Medici of France.” (Outlook.) ”

“ The ban of human opinion would relegate her to outer darkness for leaving her home and husband and placing her love in the keeping of a man to whom she is irresistibly drawn, one upon whom disease had passed the death sentence. ”

“ When he finds the daughter of his Clémentine poor and abused he seeks, with a child-like ignorance of the world’s ways, to help her and in so doing commits his great crime: but by it he gains his point and becomes god-father to Jeanne’s romance and to her children.
“Even Lafcadio Hearn’s translation can hardly render in English all the charm of this wholly delightful story in which M. France put all the grace of style and delicacy of characterization which are his in his inspired moments.” ”

“ More passionate, and vastly more intelligent than La Pompadour, her French rival in intrigue and gallantry, she was a nobler type of woman, for she was really in love with Eberhard Ludwig, the reigning Duke of Wirtemburg, and though she played his dull and colorless wife many a cruel trick, and even attempted to assassinate her, our sympathies in spite of ourselves are stirred rather in the favour of the brilliant mistress than of the highly respectable but phlegmatic wife. ”

“ Little.
“As a literary production the story deserves high praise. It is realistic in the best sense of that much-abused term, and the depressing effect of the story is at times counteracted by an underlying vein of humor which permeates much of the dialogue. Yet it is a book that we cannot find it in our heart to recommend, as it does not solve the problem and the general effect upon the reader’s mind is decidedly depressing.” ”