l at which Loudon Dodd was educated in
Stock Exchange flutters was rather less convincing than any dream of
Paradise, but none the less amusing. At home in Edinburgh, with the old
Scottish master of jerry-building and of "plinths," the atmosphere was
truly Scots, tea-coseys and all, while the reminiscences of Paris and
Fontainebleau, and the _grandeurs et miseres_ of "the young
Americo-Parisienne sculptor" were perfectly fresh to the world, though
some of the anecdotes were known to Stevenson's intimates. Mr. James
Pinkerton is a laudable creation, with his loyalty, his innocence, his
total ignorance and complete lack of taste, and his scampers too near
the wind of commercial probity. The spirit of hustle incarnate in a man
otherwise so innocent, the ideals caught from heaven knows what American
works for the young, and the inspired patriotism, the blundering
enthusiastic affection, make the early Pinkerton a study as original as
it is entertaining.

The sale by auction of the wreck, which, by arrangement, is to be
Pinkerton's prey, the mysterious opposition of the other bidder, so
determined to win an object apparently so worthless, is no less
thrilling than the sale of the fur coat in Boisgobey's "Crime de
l'Opera." But the reader knows why the fur coat is so much desired,
whereas I remember being driven so wild by curiosity about the value of
the wreck that I wrote to Louis, desiring to learn the secret. He would
not divulge it, and when, after the voyage to the island and the
excitement of knocking the wreck to pieces were over--when the secret
came out, it was neither pleasant nor probable. That a mild British
amateur of water-colour drawing should have taken part in a massacre of
men, shot painfully with cheap revolvers, was an example of "the
possible improbable," and much more of a tax on belief than the
transformation of Dr. Jekyll. When I mildly urged this criticism, I
learned, by return of post, from a correspondent usually as dilatory as
Wordsworth, that I was a stay-at-home person ignorant of the world, and
of life as it is lived by full-blooded men on the high seas. That was
very true, but the amateur in water-colour was also a mild kind of good
being. "What would I have done with the crew who were such compromising
witnesses, and were butchered?" I would have marooned them.

"The Beach of Falesa" is a revelation of unfamiliar life and character,
and one is attached to the little brown heroine. There was