Thurston of Orchard Valley

Thurston makes a very satisfactory hero, and his engineering exploits are difficult and daring enough to hold us fairly breathless. The author does not indulge in subtleties of analysis, and his characters are never deeply convincing in their psychology; but he has a feeling for nature that he knows how to make contagious, and an instinct for the picturesque. If the company to which he introduces us is made up of lay figures, it is at least an interesting society,— and it must not be forgotten that most of the people we meet in actual life are hardly more than lay figures in our consciousness.