CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Three Geoffreys. By " M. M." (W. H. Allen.)—This is a sort of tragi-comedy of errors, in which the leading parts are played by three Dromios, who may be distinguished from each other as Jerry, Geoffrey, and Jeff. The prize for which they contend is a certain Dorothy, who appears at the very beginning as " not a nowadays little girl," who does not use such phrases as "awful shame" and " frightful swindle," although she does talk of " very very hard," tumbles her ringlets over her eyes, humps her back, and makes her shoulders look sulky. Dorothy is a very good example of an impulsive, impressionable, and well-meaning girl. She is, indeed, a good deal more natural than Geoffrey, who is impossibly unselfish, as is more than amply demonstrated by his substituting another man for himself as bridegroom at the eleventh hour, or rather, on the stroke of twelve. Jeff's scoundrelism is unquestionable, but Jeff himself as a scoundrel is too much of a phantom. On the whole, however, The Three Geoffreys, which, in respect of its character, is on the borderland between a novel and a gift-book, is an excellent work of its class from the literary point of view, and as wholesome as it is excellent.
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