That imagination and humour have some existence in the Canadian mind--though one sees little of those qualities in the press or in public speeches, or in parliamentary debates--we can well believe when we read "The Dodge Club Abroad," by Professor De Mille,[50] who was cut off in the prime of his intellectual strength, or "A Social Departure," by Sara Jeannette Duncan,[51] who, as a sequence of a trip around the world, has given us not a dry book of travels but a story with touches of genial humour and bright descriptions of life and nature, and who is now following up that excellent literary effort by promising sketches of East Indian life. A story which attracted some attention not long since for originality of conception and ran through several editions, "Beggars All," is written by a Miss L. Dougall, who is said to be a member of a Montreal family, and though this book does not deal with incidents of Canadian life it illustrates that fertility of invention which is latent among our people and only requires a favourable opportunity to develop itself. The best literature of this kind is like that of France, which has the most intimate correspondence with the social life and development of the people of the country. "The excellence of a romance," writes Chevalier Bunsen in his critical preface to Gustav Freytag's "Debit and Credit," "like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the course of human things.... The most vehement longing of our times is manifestly after a faithful mirror of the present." With us, all efforts in this direction have been most common place--hardly above the average of "Social Notes" in the columns of Ottawa newspapers.