SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2390, 20 February 1915, Page 5

SOME RECENT FICTION.

NEW ENCLANDERS IN OLD ENGLAND. Those who have read . and enjoyed Joseph C. Lincoln- s stories of .the Cape Cod folk, 6uch as "Captain Warren'sWards," "The Postmaster," and "The Rise of Roscoe Paine," will need no recommendation from me to turn to the pages of Mr. Lincoln's latest effort, "Kent Knowlee: Quahaug" (Applstons; per Whitcombe and Tombs), which is now on. sale at the bookshops. The title of the. story needs some explanation for New Zealand readers. Quahaug, I may say, is Yankee for clam, that shell-fish so beloved of Americans, but which most Englishmen find too coarse , to 1 be palatable. In Mr. Lincoln's story the nickname of Quahaug is given to a young literary man, who lives at the quiet 1 little village of Bay-; port, on aoeount of his reserved manner and his objection to be dragged out of his social shell. With his distant cousin, Hephzibah, a typical New England spinster of the capable, com-mon-sense type, Kent.Knowles lives a studious, secluded, bachelor life. Suddenly, however, Knowles and his relative set off to England in quest of Hephzibah's orphan niece, whose mind has been poison®! against her American relatives by her wastrel English father, a. criminal who had fled from America and who. brings up his daughter in the belief that Hephzibah's • family had grossly defrauded,him. She is discovered in London, and befriended by the kindly old spinster and by the young American, who falls iii love with her. For a time the girl is very suspicious of, the newly-found relatives, but enlightenment as to i their motives, and as to her father's true character, comes to her at last, and the story has a very happy ending; brought about by the author with quite conspicuous originality. Throughout- the book stress is laid upon the difference' between American and English ways of thought and.living, the contrasts being drawn ■with much genial humour. Hephzibah's experiences on an Atlantic liner, in London with English servants, and the' "county people" are vastly amusing, and, Mr. Liucoln .i 6 just as successful in his descriptions of the English point of view of the American "invasion." Mr, Lincoln has never given us a better character than Cousin Hephzibah, whose comments upon life in London— in a fashionable West End hotel—in Paris, and in an English rural-district, are irresistibly droll. By all means make early acquaintance with the Quahaug and the delightful Hephzibah,