BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 11168, 17 February 1900, Page 8

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

‘ One Year.’ By Dorothea Gerard. W. Blackwood and Son’s Colonial Library. A novel the greater portion of which deals with family life in Poland is somewhat out of the beaten track, but the present loses nothing by selecting such an uncommon locale ; nor do the men and women with which it is chiefly concerned lose any human interest by being Poles. The customs and manners of tho families named, though interesting, are cot permitted to overburden the main theme, which is the brief life history of a highly-cultured, pure-scaled maiden ; nor do they hide the fact that the like human emotions arc common to no al', no matter under what sky wo may dwell. The story is probable in itself—in fact too true, we imagine, in some cases—so far as its leading features are ooacercod, and naturally worked cut. Ics motive is merely another illustration of tho proverb that the ill men do lives after them Tho commonplace incident of a desperate man cheating at cards fimUhca the cause for crime, misery, anil death years after the ant was eemmi led, and upon the lives of those who neither pii-tip'paied in ior know of the deed. The chiefd a ne'er, Jadwiga Zieliutka, is well d*awn, and the picture of an extremely engaging t;e snnalicy is presented. Possessing the lofaest ideals of honor, unselfisl n"ss, and love, she in her ignorance invests her betrothed with ihe same faiths, and uriquest’ouingly looks in her hour of trouble for ti at absolute trust and reliance that i-he, from betvery nature, mast and does give to him. When tho inevitable awakening comes, and she-aces how the first touch of disgrace sweeps away her idol and leaves but a very poor specimen of shoddy humanity in its place, her grief and scorn and the sense of self-abasement that the should have sunk so low as to give away her womanhood to one so despicable cauut-it'utn fhe be-.t chapters in the work, " Wladimir, Wladimir, whut would I not have done for you—no, not for you, but fir the mm 1 b li; J -'el. jou were!” "It is like teeing a friend die ; My Wladimir is dead to-day, and nothing can ever moke him alive again ! ’ T.ia book is marred in several places by the writer using words that cjh hardly be tvgatdc! as the most appropriate—e.g , victuals for food, news for views, mien for luck, antipathetic for bit* ful ; nor tur we care much for Mich a word oh " contradictiousiy.” However, 1 One Year ’ is a good story, and well worth reading.