t is reported, is not meeting with great success in this
country, did not profit by the hint of the soap company and advertise a
cake of soap to be given as an inducement with every copy of her book.

A. L. A.

WINDHAM, N. H.

THE USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS.

[Brief, pointed, practical paragraphs discussing the use and misuse
of words and phrases will be printed in this department. All
readers of THE WRITER are invited to contribute to it.
Contributions are limited to 400 words; the briefer they are, the
better.]

* * * * *

"=Cenotaph.="--We are told that a cenotaph is a monument "in memory of
one buried elsewhere"--otherwise, "an empty tomb." A recent number of a
popular magazine contains an article on "Memorials of Edgar Allen Poe."
When the author asked to be directed to the grave of the poet, the
sexton pointed to the cenotaph of white marble in the corner at the
intersection of two streets, and we are told that "the remains" were
"transferred to this more conspicuous spot from the family lot in the
rear of the church." Are not "high-sounding" words too often used
without reference to their suitableness? Mr. Pecksniff called his
daughter "a playful warbler,"--not that she was, we are told, "at all
vocal," but that Mr. Pecksniff was in the habit of using a word that
rounded a sentence well.

P. MCA. C.

EAST BRIDGEWATER, Mass.

BOOK REVIEWS.

LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS TO WILKIE COLLINS. Edited by Lawrence
Hutton. With Portraits and Fac-similes. 171 pp. Cloth, $1.00. New
York: Harper & Brothers. 1892.

The friendship between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins began when
Dickens was nearly forty, and Collins about twenty-five years of age.
Ten years later the marriage of the daughter of Dickens to the brother
of Collins cemented the intimacy then begun, and it continued unbroken
until the death of Dickens, in 1870. Part of the familiar correspondence
between the two men was printed in "The Letters of Charles Dickens"; but
many more letters from Dickens were found after the death of Collins,
and from these Miss Hogarth selected the specimens that make up the
present volume. As Mr. Hutton says in his introduction: "They not only
show their writer as he was willing to show himself to the man whom he
loved, but they give an excellent idea of his methods of collaboration
with the man whom he had selected from all oth