White." By Joel Chandler Harris. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
The subject of female doctors has been treated by Mr. Howells, who allows a young and pretty woman to practise medicine just as he allows her the indulgence of any pretty whim and caprice, and by Miss Phelps, who shows the coming of the Golden Age together with the days and works of the female doctors: accordingly, we are inclined to regret that Miss Jewett should have encumbered her first novel—to which all her many admirers were looking forward eagerly—with such a controversy. The fault we have to find with the endless debate is the infusion of an intense seriousness into the argument for female doctors, as if a void existed which must be filled. There are already many more male doctors in the world than the world needs, most of whom work with their highest abilities and intense belief in their dogmas without successfully grappling with the problems which disease presents. To add to the already over-crowded profession vast numbers of a sex not usually considered scientific or endowed with keen, accurate intellectual vision does not seem to promise the instant dawn and full noonday which enthusiasts declare to be shining in the distance. But, luckily, one is not obliged to do battle with a romancer's chimeras, and the good little Nan of this story, who decides against the sweetest impulse of her heart to accept a life of so-called duty instead of love, has a charm and a sweet coercion of her own that may well attract liking and sympathy. It must be nevertheless in Miss Jewett's details that her full strength lies, and in any judgment of "A Country Doctor" one is inclined to separate as opposing elements the animating idea of the book and its really delightful points. Two of the early chapters, "A Farm-House Kitchen" and "At Jake and Martin's," have that delicate relish for characteristics and faithful rendering of the New-England dialect, suggesting humor without being exactly humorous, which belong to her short stories. In fact, "Jake" and "Martin," two brothers with an insatiable appetite for each other's society, and who, "as they hoed corn, or dug potatoes, or mowed, or as they drove to the Corners sitting stiffly upright in the old-fashioned, stiffly-braced wagon, were always to be seen talking as if it were the first meeting after a long separation," yet hardly spoke to the world at large, seem worthy of a more extended study. Marilla, the doctor's housekeeper and factotum, is a treasure both to her employer and to the reader,—to the latter in particular, when at an inauspicious moment company arrives at the house as she is on the point of setting out for Friday-evening prayer-meeting. "I'd like to say to some folks that we don't keep hotel," she grumbles while she goes about the task of preparing a fresh meal. "I wish to my heart I'd slipped right out o' the front door and gone straight to meetin', and left them there beholdin' of me. Course he hasn't had no supper, nor dinner neither, like's not; and if men are ever going to drop down on a family unexpected it's always Friday night, when everything's eat up that ever was in the house. I s'pose after I bake double quantities to-morrow mornin' he'll be drivin' off before noon-time, and treasure it up that we never have nothin' decent to set before folks. Anna, you've got to stir yourself and help while I get the fire started up; lay one of them big dinner-napkins over the red cloth, and set a plate an' a teacup,—for as to laying the whole table over again, I won't and I shan't. There's water to cart upstairs, and the bedroom to open, but, heaven be thanked, I was up there dustin' to-day; and if ever you set a mug of flowers into one o' the spare-rooms again, and leave it there a week or ten days to spile, I'll speak about it to the doctor. Now you step out o' my way, like a good girl. I don't know whether you or the cat's the worse for gettin' before me when I'm in a drive. I'll set him out somethin' to eat, and then I'm goin' to meetin' if the skies fall!"
Max O'Rell very cleverly remarks in his "John Bull and His Island" that England, after gaining all the territory she desires on earth, has annexed to herself, besides, the kingdom of heaven. This seems precisely what a certain class of novelists have done of late, and Mr. Bellamy's latest story is far from being the first "romance of immortality" full of quaint and queer revelations and making free use of a Jacob's ladder on which angels may ascend and descend. "Miss Ludington's Sister" is, however, one of those novels which the reviewer should hesitate to analyze at length, lest he rub the bloom off the reader's pleasure in plucking the fruit for himself. Spiritualists will like the plot better than the dénouement, while to others it will require the dénouement to make the plot
