CHAPTER IV.

A BORE.

"I've got all my work done, and here I am at your service, Miss Lucy, and ready to hear what you've written of your new tale, when we've had some tea, and a slice of this cold pheasant," he said, taking one wrapped up in a sheet of the 'Monday Review' from his pocket.

"Lucy has been writing all day long," said Mrs. Blair," and has, I should think, half finished the tale, and I have quite completed the comforter I have been making for you."

"Well, I'm glad you're both so industrious ; talent and industry, Mrs. Blair, don't often go together; but when they do, success is pretty nearly certain. Now then, here's the breast of this fine fellow between you and Miss Lucy, and the rest of him I'll soon despatch."

While engaged in eating or drinking, Grinlay Snarl was silent; but he was a very rapid eater, and when he was done, he expected everyone else to be done too.

Lucy was too much annoyed at his intrusion, and at the idea of his being looked upon even by Dinah and Ben as her "young man," to do more than taste the pheasant, and Mrs. Blair took care to be done in time to have the tea-things removed as soon as Grinlay Snarl had finished his sixth cup, and tenth slice of bread-and-butter (cut by Lucy).

"And now," said Grinlay Snarl, "before I settle to Miss Lucy's tale, I must tell her I've brought her two books that she may try her hand at reviewing, and as I know she can't

bear (as yet at any rate) to slash away, I've chosen two that really deserve a good deal of praise; one is a little 'Handbook of Etiquette,' and it's written with so much good taste,good feeling, and tact, that though I've a great prejudice against etiquette in itself, and books that treat of it, yet I cannot but approve of this. There's a great deal of the libertyloving Yankee in me," continued Grinlay Snarl, rocking himself in the American chair, “I should like, if I didn't think it would seem too free and easy to you and mamma there, to sit like our brother Jonathan with my feet on the mantel-piece. I should like not to be obliged to bow to people I don't respect, nor be compelled to enquire with mock solicitude about the health of those whose very death would not affect me at all. Like Lord Byron, I grudge an ugly woman the liver-wing of a chicken, and don't see why I should stand till I'm ready to drop, in order that some pert nobody in petticoats may sit and stare at me-I hate the back seat

in a carriage or a private box, and detest the principle that

“When a lady's in the case,

All other things of course give place,”

but yet I own there are many little hints in this small volume that even I feel I can profit by-particularly," and he looked at Lucy with an expression in his green eyes that conyerted his spectacles into burning glasses, and made her turn first red and then pale, "particularly in the very interesting and admirably written parts, Miss Lucy, that treat of the Etiquette of Courtship and Matrimony."

But," said Lucy, taking the little book into her hand and reading a few paragraphs here and there, "though I own that this little work seems to supply a great desideratum, and to be full of really useful and practicable hints, I have not the least idea how to set about reviewing it."

"Haven't you? then listen, and I'll tell you. In a general way we (by we I mean the

critics) don't look much further than the names of the book, the author, and the publisher, before we decide whether we will cut up or cry it down!"

it

"Oh, but," said Lucy; "that seems to me to be both cruel and unjust."

66

It cuts both ways, Miss Lucy! there is as much party spirit in literature as in politics,

and quite as exclusive a clique on both sides; woe then to the poor author who has interest with neither of these cliques, his is very up-hill work indeed, and as what WE cry down the 'Inspector,' or the 'Inquisitor,' or the 'Hornet,' is sure to cry up, and vice versa, the authors get both bane and antidote at once.'

"But," said Lucy, "if the work is a bad work, and you praise it, how can you support your opinion by extracts ?"

We are not bound to give extracts, but even if we do, there are few books so good that some very weak, silly part cannot be picked out for a purpose, or so bad that we