APPLETONS' SPRING BULLETIN 



extravagant situations. His new book is the most important, as regards length, 

 quality, and sustained interest, which he has given us for some time. The scene 

 opens in London with the introduction of a struggling architect to whom there 

 comes an extraordinary experience which furnishes a fair field for the fancy and 

 humor of the writer. There can be no doubt regarding the popularity of Mr. 

 Anstey's latest novel. 



E. HOUGH. 



The author of The Girl at the Halfway House, Mr. E. Hough, gained 

 general recognition by his remarkable book, " The Story of the Cowboy," pub- 

 lished by D. Appleton and Company in this country, 

 and also published in England. 



The Girl at the Halfway House has been called 

 an American epic by critics who have read the manu- 

 script. The author illustrates the strange life of the 

 great westward movement which became so marked in 

 this country after the civil war. A dramatic picture of 

 the battle of Fredericksburg, which has been compared 

 to scenes in " The Red Badge of Courage," opens the 

 story. After this "Day of War," in which the hero 

 and heroine first meet, there comes ** The Day of the 

 Buffalo." The reader follows the course of the hero and 

 his friend, a picturesque old army veteran, to the 



frontier, then found on the Western plains. The author, than whom no one can 

 speak with fuller knowledge, pictures the cowboy on his native range, the wild 

 life of the buffalo hunters, the coming of the white-topped emigrant wagons, 

 and the strange days of the early land booms. Into this new world comes the 

 heroine, whose family finally settles near at hand, illustrating the curious phases 

 of the formation of a prairie home. The third part of the story, called "The 

 Day of the Cattle," sketches the wild days when the range cattle covered the 

 plains and the cowboys owned the towns. The fourth part of the story is called 

 "The Day of the Plow," and in this we find that the buffalo has passed from 

 the adopted country of hero and heroine, and the era of towns and land booms 

 has begun. While this story is a novel with a love motive, it is perhaps most 

 striking as a romance of the picturesque and dramatic days of early Western life. 

 It shows the movement westward, and the free play of primitive forces in the 

 opening of a new country. Nothing has been written on the opening of the 

 West to excel this romance in epic quality, and its historic interest, as well as 

 its freshness, vividness, and absorbing interest, should appeal to every American 

 reader. 



The Last Lady of Mulberry \s. the title of a fre>h and charming novel, 

 whose author, a new writer, Mr. Henry Wilton Thomas, has found an unexploited 

 field in the Italian quarter of New York. Mr. Thomas is familiar with Italy as 

 well as New York, and the local color of his vivacious pictures gives his story a 



