Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications.
Z E P H.
A POSTHUMOUS STORY.
BY HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).
One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
"The story is complete in spite of the fact that a few chapters remained still to be written when the writer succumbed to disease. Begun and mainly completed at Los Angeles last year, the manuscript had been put by to be completed when returning health should have made continuous labor possible. But health never returned; the disease steadily deepened its hold, and a few days before her death, foreseeing that the end was near, Mrs. Jackson sent the manuscript to her publisher, with a brief note, enclosing a short outline of the chapters which remained unwritten.... The real lesson of the book lies in Zeph's unconquerable affection for his worthless wife, and in the beautiful illustration of the divine trait of forgiveness which he constantly manifested toward her. As a portraiture of a character moulded and guided by this sentiment, 'Zeph' will take its place with the best of Mrs. Jackson's work; a beautiful plea for love and charity and long-suffering, patience and forgiveness, coining from one whose hand now rests from this and all kindred labors."—New York Christian Union.
"Although the beautiful and pathetic story of 'Zeph' was never quite completed, the dying author indicated what remained to be told in the few unwritten chapters, and it comes to us, therefore, not as a curious fragment, but as an all but finished work. There is something most tender and sad in the supreme artistic conscientiousness of one who could give such an illustration of fidelity and so emphasize the nobility of labor from her death-bed. These things that bring back the gracious spirit from whose loss the heart of the reading world is still smarting, would lend pathos and interest to 'Zeph' even if they did not exist in the story itself. The creation of 'Zeph' is a fitting close to a life of splendid literary ctivity, and it will be enjoyed by those who believe in the novel as, first of all, a work of art, which can be made in proper hands a tremendous force for truth and justice, and real instead of formal righteousness."—New York Commercial Advertiser.
"As people grow older they see more and more clearly that love the love between man and woman is the great power that shapes character, and makes life a blessing, a burden, or a curse. More and more deeply did Mrs. Jackson feel the omnipotence of perfect, patient love, the only power that is sure of final victory, and to show this did she tell the story of Zeph. Before the story was finished, Mrs. Jackson became too ill to work any more; but the life of Zeph was very near her heart; she wanted to make it known, to impress the lesson, that through knowledge of a great forgiving human love even the saddest and most sinful creature may come to a faith in a great forgiving divine love, in a God as good as she has known a man to be, and so in her last hours Mrs. Jackson made a brief outline of the plot for the end of the story. As her latest work, this has a special and pathetic interest."—Boston Daily Advertiser.
Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the Publishers,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
