In paper, 8vo., 34 and 63 pp. Singapore-Hongkong-Shanghai-Yokohama: Kelly Walsh, La. 1899.
What Mrs. Steele has done for India, Lise Boehm in her China Coast Tales is doing for China; and doing it so well that her admirers cannot but regret the self-restraint which limits her production. The two stories which are now published show no falling off in interest or freshness; but it is, perhaps, significant that Coming Home, which is later in date than Peter TWong—a story which appeared some time ago in our columns—is but faintly connected with China. There is always a glamour about the East, but there is probably no oriental country #o devoid of all romance and sentiment as China. These unlovely people are more curious in their customs than picturesque, and their materialistic nature and sordid lives do not offer many attractions to a writer however imaginative. Love, that mighty force in the West, that incentive to high ambitions and great deeds, the quickener of all that is noblest in humin nature, the almost universal foundation of our fiction, appears in this country to be regarded asa passion too degraded for respectable literature. Under such conditions Lise Boehm has turned her attention to foreign life in China, and her stories may well make us thoughtful. She is no frivolous scribbler scratching the surface of lifo, and gaining a cheap success by ill-natured criticism, Her drawing of character and her descriptions, vivid in their terseness, show habits of reflection and powers of observation, while her style leaves us in no doubt as toher culture. When, therefore, we find running through all her stories an undercurrent of bitterness which is almost cynicism, a ruthless dissection of the paltriness of treaty-port ambitions, Townes of existence out here, of petty pitiless exposure of the vulgarity and shal-
jealousies from which even the Lord's anointed are not exempt, anid frequent yieldings to vices which undermine the founda. tions of manhood and probity, we may well ask ourselves whether we have not something more to fear than the suffering of our physical health by the insalubrity of the material atmosphere. However, in Coming Home we find that the authoress has still some hope in human nature, even after exposure to the perils of Shanghai. She paints a successful young Scotchman who returns to his native Aberdeen after successful career in the Model Settlement. His emotions and reflections on reaching the scenes of his childhood and youth, after ten years of the Eastand after the evolution from a callow rustic to the trust manager of a large firm, are extremely natural. The story is simply an account of his first ences in surroundings become so un-and when the first grave problem his life confronts him, and he has to choose between the rustic love of his youth and a brilliant Shan i to us), the he has remained a man and shows that ho is made of the sterling stuff we expect to find in all his countrymen.
Peter Wong is in Lise Boehm's earlier As we have said, the story will be to some of our readers, and we shall merely call attention to the skilful portrayal of character. In Gregory Ki we have a type well known among us "Gregory King had always lived in Shanghai, and he liked living there. He
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.