“A Marsh Island,” By Sarah Orne Jewett.  Boston:  Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

“The Duchess Emilia.”  By Barrett Wendell.  Boston:  James R. Osgood & Co.

“Across the Chasm.”  “Within the Capes.”  New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“One of the Duanes.”  By Alice King Hamilton.  Philadelphia:  J.B.  Lippincott Company.

“Tales from Many Sources.”  Vols.  I. and II.  New York:  Dodd, Mead & Co.

There is a generous use of good material in Mr. Warner’s novel, the scene of which is laid in a New England manufacturing town, with all the sharp and diversified social contrasts, the eager strifes and competitions, that belong to such a community, clearly portrayed.  The author calls his story “A Problem of To-Day,” and it is his study to press home to the consciousness of the reader the series of dull and wearing miseries, the bitter discouragements and pathetic misfortunes, which pursue the working-man whose most faithful labor insures him no secure hold upon future comfort and prosperity.  It is both the strength and the weakness of the book that its most prominent figure, Richard Wilton, is a wealthy mill-owner who has risen to his position in a way which makes him an unfair representative of the class of capitalists.  A man without intellect or humanity, without faith, without law, a robber of the dead, a despoiler of the widow and orphan, a successful impostor, a remorseless brute who takes pleasure in outraging and crushing his subordinates, would naturally be a bad master and make his work-people miserable by heaped-up tyrannies.  His faults are not the inevitable outgrowth of a position of power and the conflict between capital and labor, but are the result of his own individual depravity.  But this man’s personality is a powerful one, and his personality is the motive of most of the dramatic events which crowd the pages.  The history of the “strike” which follows the reduction of wages at Trade Lawn Mills is faithfully and vigorously given.  Mr. Warner evidently knows the temper of workingmen, their patience and impatience, their trials, temptations, and weaknesses.  He gauges with pitiful fidelity the faults of character and purpose which make almost every “strike” contain within itself the germs of collapse and failure.  The plot is cleverly conceived and successfully carried out.  That the bubble which has for a time floated Richard Wilton’s frauds and crimes bursts at last, and that the villain is brought to well-merited disgrace, is a matter of course.  Trade Lawn Mills pass into the hands of their rightful owners, and certain co-operative ideas which are an essential ingredient of the story and its applied moral are carried out.  The author attaches high importance to co-operative schemes, and finds in them the clear solution of the vexing questions concerning the future of the workingman.  As an offset to the somewhat dark and troubled pictures of life which the story presents, there are sunny and pleasant passages in which a High-Church clergyman and a young lady by the name of Sydney Worthington figure.  The whole book is, in fact, inspired by a spirit of hopefulness and a sure belief that divine order overrules the efforts, successes, and failures of the humblest human being and that a way of deliverance is sure to come.