Thoughts and Things No. I

Clare remarks on the coincidence that nearly all of the magazine serial stories have recently concluded. Clare then goes on to discuss a few notable serials. She first discusses Mrs. Stowe's "Minister's Wooing," giving a review of the story and discussing the trend among critics to give credit to male editors or to assume that men are somehow behind good female writing. Clare also reviews and discusses G.W. Curtis's Trumps, Charles Reade's Good Fight, Thackeray's Virginians, Dickens's All The Year Round, and Out of Depths. Of Thackeray's Virginians, Clare discusses the dullness of the character of George Washington and discusses her wish that Thackeray had "selected Pfaff's, as the place worthy to furnish lager for heroes" (2). Of Out of the Depths, Clare remaks that the "rehabillitation of an unfortunate woman will ever be a subject of interest to all earnest and just minds" (2).