a hardihood and success which nothing in this ingenuous narrative sufficiently explains, the Honourable Lavinia Elliston, Lord Ronald and the extravagant Mrs. Latham rush in to patch up the Christopher-Katherine alliance. I don't suspect Mr. Thomas Cobb of thinking that people really do things quite like this, but probably he found that his characters took the bits between their teeth—as they well might. Lord Ronald's share in the transaction seemed particularly gratuitous. I can only think that since moving in photographic circles he had discarded his high patrician polish in favour of a distinctly mat surface. He didn't marry the widow Latham because he hated the thought of touching old man Latham's money. She, discovering this, disposed of the whole of it in a few months of gloriously expensive living and giving. This, by the way, was her "Extravagance," which of course brought the happy ending. O, Mr. Cobb!
The king of curmudgeons could not complain when Mrs. Conyers is described as "one of the most entertaining hunting novelists of the day," but when Messrs. Methuen call her book (A Mixed Pack) "a collection of Irish sporting stories" I may at least be allowed to wonder at the inadequacy of their description. For the fact of the matter is that a third part of this volume, and by no means the worst part, is concerned with little Mr. Jones, a traveller in the firm of Amos and Samuel Mosenthal, who were dealers in precious stones and about as Irish and as sporting as their names suggest. Mr. Jones, in the opinion of the Mosenthals, was the simplest soul that they had ever entrusted with jewels of great value. Although the tales of apparent simpletons who outwit crafty villains are becoming tedious in their frequency, I can still congratulate Mrs. Conyers upon the thrills and shudders that she gets into these stories of robbery and torture. Not for a moment do I believe in Mr. Jones, but for all that I take the little man to my heart. As for the tales of sport, it is enough to say that they are written with so much wit and verve that even I, who am commonly suffocated with boredom when I have to listen to a hunting story, found them quite pleasant to read.
My expectations of enjoyment on opening The Whalers (Hodder and Stoughton) were nil, for the tales of whaling to which from time to time I have been compelled to listen have produced sensations which can only be described as nauseating. Somewhere, somehow, I knew that brave men risked their lives in gaining a precarious livelihood from blubber, but I was more than content to hear no further details either of them or their captures. Let me acknowledge, then, that Mr. J. J. BELL has persuaded me, against my will, of the romance and fascination of the whalers calling. The twelve stories—or perhaps they ought to be called sketches—in this book contain plenty that is romantic and practically nothing that is repulsive. "There is," the author says with engaging frankness, "much that is slow in whaling. On the whole there is more anxiety than excitement, more labour than sport." Not for me is it to contradict such an authority, but even granted that he is right the fact remains that no one can justly complain of a lack of excitement in these stories, though complaints may legitimately be made that their pathos is sometimes allowed to drop into sentimentality. "The Herr Professor—an Interlude" deserves an especial word of praise, for it proves again that Mr. Bell, when not occupied in other directions, can be simply and delightfully funny.
It must have happened to all of us to be hailed by some friend with the greeting, "I've got the funniest story to tell you; it'll make you scream," and to listen thereafter to something that produced nothing but irritated perplexity. Then, if the friend were a valued one, with a record of genuine humour, we would perhaps evoke with difficulty a polite snigger, and so break from the encounter. Well, this is very much what I cannot help feeling about The Phantom Peer (Chapman and Hall). I have had such entertainment from Mr. Edwin Pugh in the past that I prepared for this Extravanganza (his own term) in a mood of smiling anticipation. But from the first page to the last it had me beat. Fun is the last subject in the world upon which one should dare to dogmatize; and to others, more fortunate, the thing may bring laughter. I can only envy them. It is not that I complain of the impossibility of the plot. Extravaganza covers a multitude of coincidences. When Johnnie Shotter was persuaded to take the name and personality of an imaginary Lord Counterpound, I bore without a murmur the immediate arrival on the scene of an actual holder of that very title. It was the dreariness of the resulting muddle that baffled me. To make matters worse the intrigue, such as it is, breaks off abruptly for several chapters in the middle, to permit the introduction of what appears to be an attempted sature upon forcible feeding. At the end, one of the chief male characters turns out to be a woman; but as none of them was anything but a knock-jointed puppet jumping upon ill-concealed wires the transformation was just academically uninteresting. I am sorry, Mr. Pugh, but even for your sake I can only say, "Tell us a better one next time!"
At the War Office. "Oh, please could you tell me how to find Lord Kitchener's room? I want to see him particularly, and I won't keep him long. It's just to write his favourite author and flower in my album."
From the letter of an American restaurateur to a new arrival from England:—
Dear Sir,—Before I chef—one Italian noble family—now come America—start the business my own—house top side this paper. Everybody speaks it me. Lunches and Dinners worth two (2) times. I delighted preparation for you—no charge extra—only notification me few hours behind. I build for clientelle intellectual-they more appreciation my art."
