‘Auld Licht Idylls’ is a set of regular descriptions of the life of “Thrums,” with special reference to the ways and character of the “Old Lights,” the stubborn conservative Scotch Puritans; it contains also a most amusing and characteristic love story of the sect (given below), and a satiric political skit.  ‘A Window in Thrums’ is mainly a series of selected incidents in detail, partly from the point of view of a crippled woman ("Jess"), sitting at her window and piecing out what she sees with great shrewdness from her knowledge of the general current of affairs, aided by her daughter “Leeby.”  ‘The Little Minister’ is developed from the real story of a Scotch clergyman who brought home a wife from afar, of so alien a sort to the general run that the parish spent the rest of her short life in speculating on her previous history and weaving legends about her.  Barrie’s imagined explanation is of Arabian-Nights preposterousness of incident, and indeed is only a careless fairy-tale in substance; but it is so rich in delicious filling, so full of his best humor, sentiment, character-drawing, and fine feeling, that one hardly cares whether it has any plot at all.  ‘Sentimental Tommy’ is a study of a sensitive mobile boy, a born poseur, who passes his life in cloud-castles where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne’s scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror:  but with the irresistible instincts also of the born literary creator and constructor.  The other characters are drawn with great power and truth.

The judgment of contemporaries is rarely conclusive; and we will not attempt to anticipate that of posterity.  It may be said, however, that the best applicable touchstone of permanency is that of seeming continuously fresh to cultivated tastes after many readings; and that Mr. Barrie’s four best books bear the test without failure.

THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL

From ‘Auld Licht Idylls’

For two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam’l Dickie was thinking of courting T’nowhead’s Bell, and that if little Sanders Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander) went in for her, he might prove a formidable rival.  Sam’l was a weaver in the Tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter whose trade-mark was a bell on his horse’s neck that told when coals were coming.  Being something of a public man, Sanders had not, perhaps, so high a social position as Sam’l; but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the weaver had already tried several trades.  It had always been against Sam’l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the selection of the third