The review of Miss Abbott’s fictitious autobiography needs no further introduction, save the statement that the only parts of it that are based on fact are those which refer to the high esteem in which its subject—­or shall I say its victim?—­was held by Field and the names and relations of the parties mentioned.  If the reader cares to compare some of the phrases used in this autobiography with others quoted from the proceedings in the Vermont litigation in the early chapters of this book, he will find striking evidence of the persistence of literary expression in the Field family: 

  REVIEW OF THE MEMOIRS OF MISS EMMA ABBOTT.

The advance sheets of Miss Abbott’s biography have been sent to us by the publishers.  This volume, consisting of 868 pages, is entitled, “Ten Years a Song Bird:  Memoirs of a Busy Life, by Emma Abbott.”  It will be put upon the market in time to catch what is called the holiday trade, and we hope it will have that enormous sale to which its merits entitle it.  It is altogether a charming book—­it reads like a woman’s letters, so full is it of confidence couched in the artless, easy, unpretentious language of femininity.  The style is so unconscious that at times it really seems as if, attired in wrapper and slippers, the fair narrator were lolling back in an easy-chair talking these interesting things into your friendly ear.

Miss Abbott is a lady for whom we have had for a number of years—­ever since her debut as a public singer—­the highest esteem.  She is one of the most conscientious of women in her private walk, conscientious in every relationship and duty and practice that go to make the sum of her daily life.  This conscientiousness, involving patience, humility, perseverance, and integrity, has been, we think, the real secret of her success.  And no one who has watched her steady rise from poverty to affluence, and from obscurity to fame, will deny the proposition that the woman is genuinely successful; and successful, too, in the best sense, and by hard American methods.  However, it shall be our attempt not to suffer our warm personal regard for this admirable lady to color too highly our professional estimate of the literary work now before us.

Although the “Memoirs of a Busy Life” purports to be a review merely of the period of Miss Abbott’s career as a prima donna, there are three prefatory chapters wherein are detailed quite elaborately the incidents of her girl-life and of her early struggles.  This we view with particular approval, the more in especial because, since Miss Abbott’s achievement of fame, a number of hitherto obscure localities have claimed distinction as being the place of her birth.  Miss Abbott records this historical fact:  “It was on the first day of June, 1858, the month of flowers, of song and of bridals, in the then quiet hamlet of Peoria, whose shores are laved by the waters of the peaceful Illinois river and whose sun-kissed