Only genius of the first water has the ability to conjure up such
a character as Anne Shirley, the heroine of Miss Montgomery's
first novel, "Anne of Green Gables," and to surround her with
people so distinctive, so real, so true to psychology. Anne is
as lovable a child as lives in all fiction. Natasha in Count
Tolstoi's great novel, "War and Peace," dances into our ken, with
something of the same buoyancy and naturalness; but into what a
commonplace young woman she develops! Anne, whether as the gay
little orphan in her conquest of the master and mistress of
Green Gables, or as the maturing and self-forgetful maiden of
Avonlea, keeps up to concert-pitch in her charm and her
winsomeness. There is nothing in her to disappoint hope or
imagination.

Part of the power of Miss Montgomery--and the largest part--is
due to her skill in compounding humor and pathos. The humor is
honest and golden; it never wearies the reader; the pathos is
never sentimentalized, never degenerates into bathos, is never
morbid. This combination holds throughout all her works, longer
or shorter, and is particularly manifest in the present
collection of fifteen short stories, which, together with those
in the first volume of the Chronicles of Avonlea, present a
series of piquant and fascinating pictures of life in Prince
Edward Island.

The humor is shown not only in the presentation of quaint and
unique characters, but also in the words which fall from their
mouths. Aunt Cynthia "always gave you the impression of a
full-rigged ship coming gallantly on before a favorable wind;" no
further description is needed--only one such personage could be