One novel stands to ‘Ik Marvel’s’ credit, _Doctor Johns_, a story of a New England country parsonage, well written because its author could not write otherwise, faithful and exact because he knew the life, yet going no deeper than other attempts to explain the New England character, the externals of which are so easy to portray and the real essence so baffling. Among the best of ‘Ik Marvel’s’ books are those dealing with rural life. _My Farm of Edgewood_ sets forth the author’s adventures in buying a country home, and his subsequent adventures in settling therein and making life variously profitable. It is a successful attempt to magnify the office of gentleman-farmer. The attractiveness of the life is not over-emphasized, nor is it pretended that that is legitimate farming which produces big crops regardless of expense. The picture as a whole is seductive in ways not to be referred to the literary skill of the artist. It is odd enough how a lay-reader, unused to carrots and cabbages, will follow every detail of Mitchell’s experiment. Here must be some outcroppings of the primitive instinct. Moreover, the book relates to home-making, a subject perennially dear to the American heart. Our restlessness has never unsettled us in that regard. _Wet Days at Edgewood_ is a companion volume. The days here celebrated, nine in number, were made bright by readings about ‘old farmers, old gardeners, and old pastorals.’ Rejoicing in the strong common sense of ancient writers on husbandry, and in the quaint flavor of their style, ‘Ik Marvel’ chats of Roman farm and villa life, recalling what Varro and Columella had to say about the art of tilling the soil. He takes pleasure in the reflection that ‘yon open furrow ... carries trace of the ridging in the “Works and Days;” that the brown field of half-broken clods is the fallow (Νεός) of Xenophon,’ and that ‘Cato gives orders for the asparagus.’ Then he comes to modern times, to the days of Thomas Tusser, Sir Hugh Platt, Gervase Markham, Samuel Hartlib, Jethro Tull, and William Shenstone, men who farmed practically, or theoretically, or even poetically. ‘Ik Marvel’ loves them all, even those whose enthusiasm was in the ratio of their helplessness. No less dear to him is Goldsmith, who wrote what passes for a rural tale and is not rural at all, but comically urban, and Charles Lamb, who hated the country and gladly avowed it. These are Mitchell’s principal works. Having read thus far, it were a pity to overlook the two volumes on _English Lands, Letters, and Kings_, and a greater pity to overlook the instructive and entertaining _American Lands and Letters_. In brief, the reader who insists on knowing ‘Ik Marvel’ only by _Reveries of a Bachelor_ does his author an injustice and robs himself of many hours of literary delight.