[Kane] "If I went into the gardens, linking the wicket latch after me, to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers and draw a drink with the water-sodden bucket and its noisy chain, or knocked off with my stick the tall headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples; no one called out to me from any open window, or dog sprang forward to bark alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in their houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearth, and had to tread a-tip-toe as if walking down the aisles of a country church." Mr. Wilson certainly has a remarkably similar taste to that of Colonel Kane for flowers and gardens. Young Rae meets Prudence in the gardens--now observe: [Left column:] Mr. Wilson. [Right column:] Mr. Kane. [Wilson] "He ran to her--over beds of marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, through a row of drowsy looking heavy headed dahlias, and passed other withering flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer." [Kane] "If I went into the gardens. . . to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, . . . or knock off the tall, heavy headed dahlias and the sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples--no one called out to me." After Mr. Wilson had followed General Kane in the matter of flowers so closely, one marvels that he did not go with him as far as the "sunflowers and love-apples;" but General Kane was hunting "over beds of cucumbers," and perhaps the author of the "Lions of the Lord" found that his taste for vegetables did not run so closely with the General's in the vegetable line as in the matter of flowers. But seriously, does not the code of ethics in literature require that our rising young author should either have the grace to put these descriptive passages in quotation marks, or else frankly give the source whence he draws the prettiest bits of description in his much-vaunted book? In the event of the work reaching a second edition, I suggest that he adopt the whole of General Kane's description of "The Deserted City," for his opening chapter; for beautiful as his own is, it but shines with a borrowed light, and when compared with the General's it appears to great disadvantage.