CONTENTS

THE HOPPERS

A RETROSPECT

THE BREAD-WINNER

HIS LITTLE MAID

A FARM TRAGEDY

A BROKEN TRYST

AN ONLY SON

A NE'ER-DO-WEEL

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The Spectator.—“We have read Mrs. Steel’s book with ever-increasing surprise and admiration—surprise at her insight into people with whom she can scarcely have been intimate, admiration for the genius which has enabled her to realize that wonderful welter of the East and West, which Delhi must have presented just before the Mutiny. We know in literature of few sketches better than those which reveal to us Buhadur Shah, the last great Moghul ... or that of Zeemet Maihl, the evil Queen, ... or of the Moulaire, who roused by his preaching the war against the English, ... or of Tiddu, the hereditary juggler-actor, ... or of Soma, the haughty, sullen Sepoy. And the best evidence of Mrs. Steel’s genius is that those who can scarcely conceive the society will feel certain that it is truly drawn. There is many an officer who would give his sword to write military history as Mrs. Steel has written the history of the rising, the siege, and the storm. It is the most wonderful picture. We know that none who lived through the Mutiny will lay the book down without a gasp of admiration, and believe that the same emotion will be felt by thousands to whom the scenes depicted are but lurid phantasmagoria.”

The Academy.—“All that relates to the natives, whether to the sepoys, or the Court, or the town, is admirable; and the sketches of British military and civil life are absolutely convincing. Mrs. Steel sees detail everywhere, and records it minutely; but she is full of humanity, and can give us the mysticism of the Oriental as faithfully as the easy-going morality of the Anglo-Indian. Each incident, almost each chapter, is a picture by itself, revealing an extraordinary wealth of descriptive power, and a masterly insight into character.”

A.T.Q.C. in The Speaker.—“It certainly is a remarkable book. The native intrigues are brilliantly handled. Alice Gissing may claim to stand beside the really great women of fiction. The whole book has the high seriousness which, until quite recently, few people dreamed of as possible in an Anglo-Indian novel.”

The Saturday Review.—“Many novelists and spinners of tales have made use of the Indian Mutiny, but Mrs. Steel leaves them all a long way behind. Major Erlton and Alice Gissing challenge comparison with Rawdon Crawley and Becky Sharp. ‘On the Face of the Waters’ is the best novel of the Great Mutiny, and we are not likely to see its rival in our time.”

The St. James’s Gazette.—“Of the familiar incidents of the early Mutiny, how vivid and full of dramatic effect are the scenes as she paints them! The tale has been often told, but never quite with Mrs. Steel’s catholic sympathy with the native point of view. Her position is now established as a writer of the truth and romance of India. She is a fine writer, and she has written a fine novel about an epoch in our history which Englishmen can never cease to weep over and to glory in.”

The Times.—“Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the ‘dumb millions’ of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. Mrs. Steel has evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes, Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their customs and superstitions.... Mrs. Steel’s book is of exceptional merit and freshness.”

The Pall Mall Budget.—“For this week the only novel worth mentioning is Mrs. Steel’s ‘The Potter’s Thumb.’ Her admirable ‘From the Five Rivers,’ since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr. Kipling’s stories. In ‘The Potter’s Thumb,’ the charm which came from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree.”

The AthenÆum.—“There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this book (if we except the description of Tarvin’s adventures in the deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.”

Cottage Folk

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