The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-07-28
Recent Publications.

Hetty's Strange History (No Name Series;
Boston: Roberts Brothers; Portland: Loring,
Short & Harmony is as evidently from SAKE
Holm's pen as was the initial volume of the
same series, Mercy Philbricks Choice. 1t is
not so marked by the pecuiarities of the au-
thors style, it is set in key little lower than
that of the former work; and of the poems
into which Sake Holm's prose SO frequently
blossoms, is to be found but one. Neverthe-
less-perhaps indeed because Of this lesseuing
of the excess of individuality of the writer
Hetty's Strange History is better work than
thatswhich preceded it. The literary art is bet
ter, and more smoothness and unity are obsery
able in the treatment of tho subjsot-after GER
tain concessions are made to quality that
seems at present essential to Sake Holm's tai
ent popularity of literary vision akin to the
physical sight of Turner, requiring that the
critic stand at certain angle aside, before he
can enter into the scene as the designer saw it,
1t is passion of the brain, even of the soul,
that the romances of Sake Holm offer; but
the red pulsations that beat through the tissue
of many novel of less literary worth, are
rarely present in them. 1t is, after all, heart,
not only sentiment or even passion, but warm
core that sends equal heat and vigor through
out novel, central point for its life and mo-
tion; heart. that is the seat of life in every
thing created, from cabbages to kings; the
quality that we instinctively recognize and well
come in such novel as Gail. Hamilton's, and
for lack of which no intellectual fervor can
compensate.
Mr.. E. E. Hale's G. T. 7, or The Wonderful
Adventures of Pullman (Town and Country
Series; Boston: Roberts Brothers; Portland:
LoriDg, Short s. Harmony is in the well known
manner of the author-rapid, eager, isketchy
and minute by turns, carrying the reader along
by the strength of the story-tellers own inter
est in his story, and by warm frisndliness for him
who so clearly is the well-wsher, and more the
well-doer,-to every other man. The mysterious
initials of the title arel thus accounted. i.for by
Mr.. Hale: "More than generation ago, q
common joke-one of the commonest-repre-
sented that when an insolvent debtor, or
rough who had been engaged in an "unpleas-
antness," or any other loafer. who had changed
his home, wished to leave warning behind him
where he had gone, he chalked upon his door
the letters G. T. T. These letters were in no
sort mysterious. They meant and were under
stood to mean, "Gone ito Texas" 81 was so
simple and so far gone in years." Mr.. Hale
quantity explains, "that when announced
the title to this book 1 supposed all America
would know,-all America would have known
thirty years sgo-what these letters mean"
The successive layers of popular speech that
grow upon the language of country tell its
tale of years as the rings of the bark of tree.
Rather, for mems speech outlives, the toughest
wood, our language seems like the story the
geologists read in rocks; over it have swept
waves of words fiom across the sea thatlwashes
English shores of our forefathers; it has tracks
of the primal inhabitants; from the west has
rolled river of mingled streams of speech,
Spanish words-enough removed from the Cas-
tilian it is true-technical expressions of the
miners, the polemic phrases of the Latterday
Saints, and language of the sinners of all days
Add to this the constantly increasing vocabu-
larry rendered necessary by the condensation
which journalism and the telegraph impress
upon literature; by the new facts which need
new words to express them; by the unique and
graphic humor of the American-and you
have a record in which may be read the history
of nation, but among whose complications
the trace of some extinct: dodo, solitary
phrase like G. 7. I. is likely to be effaced and
lost. 1t would be curious, interesting and
useful effort to follow the course of some of
the slang words which have by force of their
vivid, picturesque or poetic quality or their ire
sistible fitness, taken their place in the vocab-
ulary; or of those, which starting well ln life,
have fallen and perished for lack of taking root
in the popular fancy.
To return however, from the sidetrack upon