but like a clever actress,
rather than by instinct or sympathy. It was obvious that she didn't
value respectability and propriety the snap of her white fingers, save
as a means to an end; and if she were in the company of one whom she
trusted intimately, she would laugh those popular virtues to scorn
with her warm, insolent breath. As it was, all the forms and
ceremonies in the world could not disguise her. Her very dress
suggested rather than concealed what was beneath it. She was a naked
goddess--a pagan goddess--and there was no help for it. She made you
realize how powerless our nice institutions are in the presence of a
genuine, rank human temperament.

"And be it here observed that I am here writing of her as a
temperament, and nothing more. I knew nothing of her former life and
experience. I had no reason to think that her conduct has ever been
less than unexceptionable. But the facts about her were insignificant
compared with her latent possibilities. Circumstances might hitherto
have been adverse to her development; but opportunity--rosy, golden,
audacious opportunity--was all she needed. She certainly bore no signs
of satiety; she had nothing of the _blase_ air. She was thirsty for
life, and she would appreciate every draught of it. She was impatient
to begin. And, contemplating her abounding, triumphant, delicious
well-being, it seemed as if she might maintain the high-tide of
enjoyment until she was a hundred. It really inclined one to paganism
to look at her."

_What Dreams May Come_, by Frank Lin (Belford, Clarke & Co.).--This is
a cleverly constructed story of English life by an American pen, and
the average reader is kept in doubt as to the sex of the author. There
is a clear, incisive style of the masculine sort on one page that
indicates the man; there is a treatment of female wearing apparel on
another that gives proof of the feminine. With us there is one feature
that solves the doubt. The pages abound in convictions. Now the female
mind, as a general thing, is not given to doubt. When a woman believes
anything she believes it, and her faith is as firm as the solid rock.
She stands "on hardpan," to use a phrase common to the Pacific slope.
Although the book is built on dreams, the theory of heredity it is
written to promulgate is no dream in the mind of this fair author. We
have called attention to the fact that the use of the novel to
illustrate some doctrine, philosophical or religious, is real