Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser. — 1905-12-01 (Lancaster, Lancashire, England)

CONCLUSION. don't wish you or anyone to view Me as a Of the book as a Whole we hardly know ; comnien suicide—overcome by this or that, what to say. The first section of it, the or bowed dewn by the thought ref failure or story, is of thrilling interest. The other two ; disanpoiniment. I have simply died to ache, parts, which are allegorical pure and simple, risen for a great. truth, and I hues died are rather tedious, although they are retruetiag humbly in God. And so you canuotH tiered by the brilliant writing and the °affray me that whi,4l I decide. To you it quishe imagery which the author displays klia,4 become an impersonal affair. Thu on page after page. Curiously enough, by must publish it because it is A dying coin- I the way, Miss Alhmhy, in a ,lotter to her mend. and publish •it word for word is I ' publishers written in June this year, in which • I :law" left An we hairs desks, bar- &nth ishe first mentioned "The Fulfilment," says: rendered this impus.sible. and it is a mere "The bock its as easy to rend as A.B.C. for ilstapingated, mildewed. revised edition d the' these who will attend. It has no allegorise tipoor girl's work which it now presented to in it, no myths—nothing but truth." AU the world. Miss Alluaby's dying *guest the same, despite this explicit statement, we wadd not be granted. • .cennet he`p treating the book De an cut and •  The asend part of the story is entitled " Hell." The Editor opens it with a note in whish he nays:—•• The want of the author's revising hand is here evident. There is no literary link between this part of the story and • Earth.' " This is quite true. The sisaind part is apparently a frogwent. Where Deborah is we have no means' of finding out, although the Editor thinlosj she is in a kind of purgatory. She no mono appears in person after the finish of "Earth," and although she is mentioned by name in "Hell" it is only as though other characters in the story are relating their experiences to her. " Hell" in a weird, beautifully drawn sketch. What the author was aiming at we frankly confess we do not kn:w. Ai she Iv‘rselt alp; in one part of the book: ' I talk at random, if it hits the mark, w, mush the better; and, if not, well, it is none the worse." But, although 2.,he talks at random we are quite convinced that there LS wime sleep-set purpose in the author's own mind; otherwise the boo,: rould not have been written. Her descriptions of seems in hell, her scornful satire of many who have found their way there, her trenchant criticism of the shams of Society, her vigorous onslaughts upon ronvontimudity, and her heartful rlmpathy with the oppressed, the weary, and the downtrodden, ! make it quite clear to tin that Miss Allonby had a purpose in her mind. But what that purpose in we repeat our inability to even imagine. All the same, this part of the book is worth reading. There is one description of a church in it, and of a church service attended by a fashionable congregation and preached to by a fashionable divine, which is as bold and virile a piece of writing as we remember in any recent work . of fiction.  "