f last summer. She
hoped the book would have the success it deserved.

This polite note was felt to be a slap in the face, but the effect of
it was softened a little later by a cordial and appreciative letter from
Miss McDonald, telling the author what great delight and satisfaction
they had had in reading it, and thanking him for a prose idyl that
showed in the old-fashioned way that common life was not necessarily
vulgar.

The critics seemed to Philip very slow in letting the public know of the
birth of the book. Presently, however, the little notices, all very much
alike, began to drop along, longer or shorter paragraphs, commonly in
undiscriminating praise of the beauty of the story, the majority of them
evidently written by reviewers who sat down to a pile of volumes to be
turned off, and who had not more than five or ten minutes to be lost.
Rarely, however, did any one condemn it, and that showed that it was
harmless. Mr. Brad had given it quite a lift in the Spectrum. The notice
was mainly personal--the first work of a brilliant young man at the bar
who was destined to go high in his profession, unless literature should,
fortunately for the public, have stronger attractions for him. That
such a country idyl should be born amid law-books was sufficiently
remarkable. It was an open secret that the scene of the story was the
birthplace of the author--a lovely village that was brought into notice
a summer ago as the chosen residence of Thomas Mavick and his family.

Eagerly looked for at first, the newspaper notices soon palled upon
Philip, the uniform tone of good-natured praise, unanimous in the
extravagance of unmeaning adjectives. Now and then he welcomed one that
was ill-natured and cruelly censorious. That was a relief. And yet there
were some reviews of a different sort, half a dozen in all, and half
of them from Western journals, which took the book seriously, saw
its pathos, its artistic merit, its failure of construction through
inexperience. A few commended it warmly to readers who loved ideal
purity and could recognize the noble in common life. And some,
whom Philip regarded as authorities, welcomed a writer who avoided
sensationalism, and predicted for him an honorable career in letters,
if he did not become self-conscious and remained true to his ideals. The
book clearly had not made a hit, the publishers had sold one edition and
ordered half another, and no longer regarded the author as a risk. But,