That the hook is written by a woman is apparent by a thousand signs.  That it proceeds from a distinct and peculiar personality, as well as from a fertile and vigorous intellect, is no less apparent.  The writer has evidently looked at life through her own eyes, and interpreted it through her own experience.  Her independence becomes at times a kind of humorous tartness, and she finds fault most delightfully.  So cant and pretence, however cunningly disguised by accredited maxims and accredited sentimentality, can for a moment deceive her sharp insight or her fresh sensibility.  This primitive power and originality are not purchased by any sacrifice of the knowledge derived at second-hand through books, for she is evidently a thoughtful and appreciative student of the best literature; but they proceed from a nature so strong that it cannot be overcome and submerged by the mental forces and food it assimilates.

Individuality implies will, and will always tends to wilfulness.  The two are harmonized in humor.  Gail Hamilton is a humorist in her wilfulness, and flashes suggestive thought and wisdom even in her most daring caprices and eccentricities of individual whim.  She is wild in sentences, heretical in paragraphs, thoroughly orthodox in essays.  Her mind is really inclosed by the most rigid maxims of Calvinistic theology, while, within that circle, it frisks and plays in the oddest and wittiest freaks.  A grave and religious earnestness is at the foundation of her individuality, and she is so assured of this fact that she can safely indulge in wilful gibes at pretension in all its most conventionally sacred forms.  This bright audacity is the perfection of moral and intellectual health.  No morbid nature, however elevated in its sentiments, would dare to hazard such keen and free remarks as Gail Hamilton scatters in careless profusion.

When this intellectual caprice approaches certain definite limits, it is edifying to witness the forty-person power of ethics and eloquence she brings readily up to the rescue of the sentiments she at first seemed bent on destroying.  As her style throughout is that of brilliant, animated, and cordial conversation, flexible to all the moods of the quick mind it so easily and aptly expresses, the reader is somewhat puzzled at times to detect the natural logic which regulates her transitions from gay to grave, from individual perceptions to general laws; but the geniality and heartiness which flood the whole book with life and meaning soon reconcile him to the peculiar processes of the intellect whose startling originality and freshness give him so much pleasure.

It would be unjust not to say that beneath all the fantastic play of her wit and humor there is constantly discernible an earnest purpose.  Sense and sagacity are everywhere visible.  The shrewdest judgments on ordinary life and character are as abundant as the quaint fancies with which they are often connected.  But in addition to all that charms and informs, the thoughtful reader will find much that elevates and invigorates.  A noble soul, contemptuous of everything mean and base, loving everything grand and magnanimous, is the real life and inspiration of the book.