not fried. Oysters and ham and eggs are fried in just enough fat to prevent them from scorching, as M. Blot may see by entering the kitchen of any restaurant or private house. Sauté means merely fried. We should not venture to correct an artist like M. Blot in his cookery, or to criticize his sauté-ing or his frying; but, although not Falstaff, we may, without presumption, object to his making fritters of English.
—With all the allowance that can be made for natural partiality for one's intellectual offspring, it is difficult to discover why a man of intelligence and education, which the author of "One Wife too Many"[1] plainly is, should think such a string of commonplace rhymes worthy of publication. The story is of a young Dutchman who emigrates to New Amsterdam, leaving his young and pretty wife in Holland until he has prepared a home for her in the new country. This done, he sends for her; but learns that she died just after his message reached Holland. Another young and pretty woman, a widow, has meantime cast her toils around him, and they are somewhat hastily married. It proves in the end, however, that Katrina, the wife in Holland, only fell into a trance, and she arrives in New Amsterdam, to Van Bigham's great perplexity. The Dominie being called in counsel, gives his opinion that as all the parties, the man included, acted in good faith, they may live together as man and two wives. But Van Bigham finds out that two wives are one wife too many. This story, not so improbable as to be rejected on that account as the foundation of a poem, affords fine opportunity for passages both of sentiment and of humor. But what the author has given us of the former is well represented by these lines:
Æfje was once most wondrous fair.
They told me so who knew;
Dark as the night her flowing hair.
Her eyes a heavenly blue.
Her perfect form, with carriage meek.
Moved with a sylph-like grace;
The rose-leaf blushed upon her cheek
And heaven shone in her face.
Like Him whose work of doing good
Was constant day and night,
She gave unto the hungry food,
To sorrowing hearts delight.
Her lover was a gentle youth,
But he was very poor;
And so her father's anger, sooth.
It drove him from his door.
It drove him from his door away,
Though he was good and brave;
He went; but ere another day.
He found a watery grave.
Gifted Hopkins's work is ten times better than this. We are not exaggerating. That callow verse-maker, or any other of his calibre, would be ashamed to write such stuff as this by the bushel a day. The penny ballads upon the old Park railings are better. We only quote it that those of our youthful readers who are inclined to verse writing and publication may take warning from it, and see into what a pretty plight one of their number—for we suppose Mr. Hopper must be very young—has got himself by his lack of discretion. The humor of the pome is such as we have in a passage in which we are told that—
A fruitful source of peevish unrest
However slender her waist may be,
And what other beauties her lord may see,
Is a wife that can't digest.
and that,
—no matter how good and trusty.
She will, if always nibbling a crust.
Be in danger of growing crusty.
We regret being obliged to express such an opinion of a volume published by a respectable firm, whose imprint is upon so many good books, and to put such writing before our readers in support of our judgment. Silence on the subject would have been our choice. But the publication of such a book in this age of the world is an offence against the dignity of literature, and as such deserves exposure and condemnation.
—The writer of "The Butterfly Hunters"[2] has contrived to turn to account the juvenile instinct for chasing butterflies—an instinct as old, doubtless, as the first boy and girl of the race—by making it the medium of some very agreeable and instructive lessons in a branch of natural his-
- ↑ "One Wife too many, or Rip Van Bigham; a Tale of Tappan Zee." By Edward Hopper. 16mo. pp. 262. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
- ↑ "The Butterfly Hunters." By Helen S. Conant. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
