H.L. Mencken

The Smart Set/April, 1914

Three great playboys of the true, the good and the beautiful, and all of them hymned and osteopathed in current books—Anthony by one of his altar boys, Bulwer-Lytton by his grandson, and Roosevelt, of course, by himself. The mountebank political, the mountebank literary and the mountebank moral! Hoch! Hoch! Dreimal hoch! ...

Anthony first—dear old darling Anthony, the stammvater and capo comico of all the smuthounds, snouters, sterilizers and antlered stags of rectitude—Anthony the chemically pure, bugaboo to the literati. Let me confess at once that I hold the fellow in honest veneration and, what is more, that I am frankly jealous of him. And why shouldn’t I be, and the rest of the book-reviewing Camorra with me? He is an amateur who has invaded our craft uninvited—and attained to a power which puts the best of the professionals to shame. He is the most potent critic that ever pulled and hauled a literature. He has the fixed, immovable ideals of a John Wesley and the deadly puissance of a Caesar Borgia.

We who ply the trade, remember, are not content to be mere referees. We think we have done only half our job when we have turned the thumb up or down. What we aspire to is that constructive authority which is so much higher and more satisfying than the empty franchise to praise and blame. We want to see the poets and the novelists pay tribute to our penetration by taking our advice. We want them to write more and more of the stuff that we think ought to be written, and less and less of the stuff that their native depravity inspires them to write. Alas, how seldom we get our wish! I myself, after years of laborious practice, can’t point to a single author who has ever heeded my whispers, or even my whoops. One and all, they blunder along as if I had never sat up with them and prayed with them, and cautioned them and sworn at them, and tempted them with stick candy and threatened them with clubs—as if I had never existed!

Consider, for example, Will Levington Comfort, a novelist I admire for his gift of fluent and luscious utterance. This Comfort, in fact, can write like the very devil. But he wastes his talents writing vague New Thought dithyrambs on Mystic Motherhood, the Third Lustrous Dimension, the Weltanschauung, the Zeitgeist and suchlike fowl—and I roar at him and make faces at him in vain. Every time he appears in the ring with another volume of transcendental soul-searching, I drop all other concerns, however pressing, and devote my whole energies to wrestling with him. I denounce him, I cajole him, I plead with him. I try to weaken and wear him out with battering rams and assegais, and then to catch his recantation as he sinks to the floor. I pursue him with ridicule, scandal, threats, flattery. I try, by cunning arts, to appeal to his cupidity, his piety, his respect for my gray hairs and sclerotic knees. I crowd a dozen Indiana genii into a paragraph in order to make room for wooing him. I pour all the ardor of a Jonathan Edwards and all the eloquence of Bossuet into the solemn business of luring him up to grace. But to what end? To no end at all. The more I picture the charms of this earth, the higher Comfort ascends into his Lustrous Dimensions. The more I beseech him to stick to ordinary sinners, the stronger grows his taste for vestals and visionaries. In each succeeding book, in fact, he departs further from my counsel. His first was still one-third terrestrial; his last was almost wholly astral. In brief, the net effect of all my labor upon him has been less than nothing. For every practical purpose, the space I have so hopefully devoted to his rescue from skyhooting might have been more profitably given over to a treatise on Infant Damnation, or to the memorabilia of Orison Swett Marden, or to a century of limericks.

So with the other critics that I know. There was a time when William Dean Howells held up Dostoyevsky and Turgenev as models for all our lady novelists, male and female—and all our lady novelists imitated Dumas pére and Anthony Hope. There was a time when all the college professors wept over

Mark Twain’s vulgarity—and Mark piled “Huckleberry Finn” on ‘Tom Sawyer.” There was a time when the whole critical fraternity begged Richard Harding Davis to change at least a few of his ‘‘as thoughs” into “as ifs”—but Richard stuck hunkerously to his “as thoughs.” And even today, despite the terrible lashings of the bachelor girls who compose the Times Book Review, Theodore Dreiser continues to fashion his books in the Dreiser way and not at all in the Times way. Let the critics plead and yammer as they will, the authors are wedded to their vices of style, grammar and psychology. They care not a single hoot for the whole worshipful company of reviewers.

No hoot, that is, for any save one. That solitary and sublime exception is A. Comstock aforesaid—and for him they care enough hoots to break the eardrums of an army corps. When Anthony sniffs and smacks his lips, they fall on their knees and strike their foreheads to the dust. When he looses a yell, they reach for the bichloride tablets and send for the embalmer. He is to all other critics what the horrid behemoth is to a colony of edogonia. He is the one American critic of national and indubitable influence, the one critic with an authentic wallop.

The reason thereof lies in what the jurisconsults and jail wardens call Title XLVI, Ch. III, Sec. 3803, of the Revised Statutes of the United States—the law, to wit, which makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine running up to five thousand dollars and imprisonment up to ten years, to deposit any “obscene, lewd or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print or other publication of an indecent character” in the United States mails. Anthony drew up that law himself and had it passed by Congress so long ago as March 3, 1873, and at the same time he had himself appointed a special Post Office inspector to enforce it. I have studied it with an open mind, but have found it, I regret to say, of indifferent merit as English prose. In point of fact, it labors under the capital defect of obscurity, for there is nothing in it to indicate just what “obscene” means. In this very literary blemish, however, lies all its critical horsepower. If the word were clearly defined, then the literati would know of a surety not only what it does mean, but also, and more important, what it doesn’t mean, and in the latter field, no doubt, there would be room enough for them to stretch their legs. But Anthony, of course, was far too cunning to put in any such plain definition. The whole potency of the statute depends upon the fact that its meaning varies sharply from day to day, according as Anthony’s cold in the head is better or worse and the jurymen before whom he performs aspire to Heaven or Hell. The result is that its menace is enormous, and that the discreet author is at the utmost pains to steer clear of it. The second result is that it rests upon American letters like a millstone upon the midriff of a medieval heretic.

I am not one, I hope, to advocate unrestrained freedom in books, no matter its theoretical advantages. I go pretty far, true enough—for example, Rabelais is a firm favorite of mine, and Congreve is another—but for that stupid nastiness which is wholly unredeemed by wit or truth or other valuable thing I have no more liking than the most austere Sunday school superintendent unhung. I know too much, however, about the effect of our prudish laws upon our national literature to view them with anything resembling patience—and what those laws are, dear old Anthony hath made them. I don’t know a single first class novelist in the United States, at least of the indubitably male sex, who is not constantly threatened by them, who hasn’t got the thought of them constantly in the back of his mind. If they were clear, if they were sensible, if they were honest, then the damage they do would be slight. But it is precisely because they are obscure and donkeyish and hypocritical that they constitute an evil and insidious influence. No self-respecting man wants to be put upon his trial for a violation of decency; no man who tries to write of life as he sees it, frankly, thoughtfully and manfully, is safe from that danger in this fair republic today. The consequence is that few make the attempt. Our national literature, and particularly our fiction, is inane and bloodless to the last degree. It no more represents the lusty and barbarous life around us than it represents the life of the Periclean Greeks. It deals almost entirely with stuffed dummies, denaturized men and women, gaseous vertebrates. Its stock situations are unheard of in the real world; its emotions and ideas are those of marionettes. In brief, it is hideously false, trivial, vapid, pharisaical, childish, mawkish, musty, disgusting. The one true thing in it is the inference that we are a race of sentimental old maids.

For all this, blame our superstitious scouring of the outside of the platter, our apparently ineradicable Puritanism—of which, as I say, good Anthony may be hailed as the symbol and archetype, the chief snouter and self-consecrated pope. But though I thus revile him for the evil that he has done, I may yet give him a full measure of veneration for the wholesale and ruthless way in which he has done it, and this I do very gladly. There is, indeed, something truly herculean about the methods and character of the man; he seems to belong to the great days of faith; there are hints in him of Calvin, of Loyola, even of Torquemada. One gets a good notion of his epic sweep and brawniness in “Anthony Comstock, Fighter,” by C. G. Turnbull (Revell), a disciple who views him with a devotion verging upon awe. He has scoured the whole country in his hunt for sinners; he has faced the most ferocious attacks without flinching; he has played the star role, in his time, in no less than 3,646 prosecutions. If all the books and pictures he has seized and destroyed were loaded upon freight cars they would fill sixteen of them. If all the persons he has arrested were to travel together by train, it would take sixty-one passenger coaches to accommodate them, each holding sixty passengers. Starting life as a humble drygoods clerk, he has come to threescore and ten as one of the most famous Americans of his time, a man as eminent as Bryan, Roosevelt, Harry Thaw or Jack Johnson, a perpetual invader of the first pages of the newspapers, the accepted representative of American life and American ideals among the peoples of Europe, the real Uncle Sam. Such an achievement, I take it, is not to be sniffed at. Such a man, whatever his follies, is not to be rated low.

Biographer Turnbull, apparently a prize pupil of the Sunday school himself, is disposed to see Divine Providence in all of Anthony’s forays and adventures, even the least of them. Does he get a verdict of guilty from a jury of Tartuffes? Then the wires from Heaven are working well. Does he pass unscathed through a plot to crack his head? Then the Lord God has stooped down to help him. Is he still alive and kicking at seventy years? Then it is because the Devil is righteously punished by his survival. Alack, I fear that good Turnbull’s piety has run away with his perspicacity. I doubt greatly, indeed, that Anthony is really the marshmallow angel he makes him out. There must be something more to the fellow than mere snuffling and psalm singing. At the bottom of him there must be a considerable humanness, a saving weakness, perhaps a genuine sporting instinct. I cannot go over the chronicle of his heavenly cavortings without seeing a touch of keen enjoyment in every separate transaction, an almost boyish delight in the row for its own sake. In a word, he runs true to the best Puritan type. The sudden surprised yelp of a sinner must be music to his ears, as it is to those of the angels. He must get a lot of fun out of life. His day’s work must be almost as thrilling as fighting bulls or burning witches.

Another enviable whooper for rectitude is the Hon. Mr. Roosevelt. One cannot read his Autobiography (Macmillan) without being vastly impressed, on the one hand, by the transparency of his demagoguery, and on the other hand, by the high old time he has enjoyed in this vale of tears. Imagine anyone having more good sport? Born to ample means, to a taste for adventure and to the gift of gab, he was already a prominent man at an age when most of us are yet immersed in calf love. What is there worth seeing in the world that he hasn’t seen—and from a grandstand seat? What is there worth doing that he hasn’t done—and with a huge crowd to egg him on? He has been everything that a man of his race and time can possibly be, from acrobat to zoologist, and in every trade or art or vice or game that he has tackled he has displayed that deceptive facility which is mistaken, nine times out of ten, for towering talent, if not for downright genius. An amateur author, the fates led him into a success which few laborious professionals of the century have ever reached. An amateur politician, he walked full tilt into a situation which made him as powerful as the moss-grown ancients of the craft. An amateur soldier, he ran away with the bays of his superiors. An amateur philosopher, borrowing from all the schools, he flamed the popular imagination with his apparent profundity. An amateur diplomat, he blundered into victories which even a Metternich or a Bismarck might have envied. An amateur in political economy, sociology, chemistry, zoology, law, logic, biology and history, he yet blazed and roared his way through every one of them, leaving enchanted multitudes of admirers behind him.

In him, indeed, American superficiality perhaps reaches its apogee. He is the perfect representative of the American spirit. For patience, for thoroughness, for the sober investigation and marshaling of facts, for that scholarly diligence which leads to sound and complete knowledge—for these things, it appears, he has scant enthusiasm. He tells us himself how, in his Harvard days, he revolted against the inevitable drudgery of the laboratory. It was his youthful ambition to be a zoologist, and he went to college with that aim, but when he found that its accomplishment involved tedious work with slides and sections, he abandoned all orderly study and confined himself to easy reading and field work. It would seem that he really didn’t want to know about animals, but merely to be able to talk about them. This peculiarity of temperament has been perceptible in all his subsequent career.

The frank autobiography of such a man would take its place among the great human documents of all time, along with the celebrated histories of Giovanni Casanova, Carlo Goldoni and Benvenuto Cellini. But in the volume under review, alackaday, the good Colonel is overwhelmed and denaturized by prudence. It is not the story of his life at all, but merely a defense of his current (and, no doubt, temporary) creed political—in brief, a campaign document. One searches it in vain for the intimate and confidential note. Important and even capital events are passed over in silence. There is no statement of his reasons for going West in 1884; there is only the barest reference to his ill-starred mayoralty campaign in 1886; there is discreet silence about the bogus contests at the Chicago Convention of 1912; there is beautiful soft-pedaling in his narrative of the Harriman episode; there is nothing but windy stump speaking in his eulogies upon the strange corps of stranger fowl who flapped their wings whenever he crowed in the White House. All that one finds, aside from a few amusing chapters of youthful and Western reminiscence, is an eloquent exposition of the so-called Progressive philosophy and an interminable boasting. In the whole of romance you will find no such angelic amalgam of sage and hero as is depicted here. He has never broken a commandment or made a mistake; his only critics and opponents have been fools and rogues; when he was President the whole burden of the national welfare was upon his shoulders; in so far as things went well, it was due to his supernal sapience; in so far as there was disaster, it was deliberately brought about to injure him. I quote a sample strophe and pass on: “This decision J caused to be annulled by the court that had rendered it.” He is speaking of the Supreme Court of the United States!

Bulwer-Lytton, as we see him in his grandson’s unusually plain-spoken “Life” (Macmillan), is a no less grotesque figure but with a saving touch of pathos. It is impossible, indeed, to view such a fantastic blend of honorable virtues and imbecile follies without something akin to pity. Whatever Bulwer accomplished in the world was achieved by dint of the most grueling toil. If he made a success of writing books and another of playing politics, it was only because he was willing to do two hard days’ work in one. There was not a sign of genius in him, nor even much show of genuine talent. Reading his poems and novels today, one is oppressed intolerably by their naiveté, their childish artificiality, their puerile straining after cheap effects. If they are enjoyed at all, it must be by children and the senile: one can scarcely conceive a healthy adult plowing through them. But in Bulwer’s day there was a large and eager public for such drivel—and Bulwer was sufficiently of that public to give it what it wanted. So he drove his laborious quill day in and day out, in the face of constant ill-health, of money difficulties and of domestic discords that would have tried a saint. And in the evenings he had fresh energy to throw into his parliamentary duties, and so effectively did he woo fame here that he ended a peer of the realm, and was even, it is said, offered the throne of Greece, vacant in 1863.

His grandson’s account of him, as I have said, is far from a mere eulogy of his character, nor is there any effort to suppress any of the more painful circumstances of his life. For example, it is plainly stated that the woman he married—one Rosina Doyle Wheeler, a professional beauty—had been his mistress before the marriage, and that she took to drink afterward. So long as they lived together, her wild extravagances kept him on the verge of bankruptcy; from the moment they separated she pursued him with the most abominable slanders. So late as 1864, when he was sixty-one years old, we find him declining a high political office on the ground that she was again making “horrible and nameless accusations” against him, not only in private society, but also to Disraeli, Lord Derby and other statesmen. Bulwer’s letters to this precious creature, before and after their marriage, throw curious sidelights upon his baroque personality. He never appears as a sensible man talking to a foolish and vicious woman, but always as one of his own heroes spouting sentimentalities at a Victorian heroine. He never wrote anything worse than these letters, and he never wrote anything more fascinating. His grandson deserves thanks for printing them in full—and no less for printing the rest of his story in full. He was one of the most puzzling of all the tragic comedians of his time. It is pleasant to be able to study him at large and at leisure in these two fat volumes.

The only other biographical book that has reached me of late is “The Tragedy of Mary Stuart,” by Henry C. Shelley (Little-Brown), a very careful and entertaining piece of writing. Chief attention is concentrated, and quite properly, upon the series of events beginning with the murder of Darnley and ending with the catastrophe at Langside, the rest of the sad queen’s story being put into a prologue and an epilogue. Passing on to the novels and printed plays (both already showing signs of the vernal efflorescence), I pull up a moment to say a word for various other non-fictional books of merit. For example, “The Curious Lore of Precious Stones,”’ by George Frederick Kunz (Lippincott), a veritable encyclopedia of the superstitions and traditions which cluster about such barbaric adornments, with a large number of curious illustrations, some of them in color. And “The Philosophy of Art,”’ by Edward Howard Griggs (Huebsch), a praiseworthy attempt to set forth the meaning and function of artistic expression, and the limitations which hedge it round. And ‘“Alastair,”’ by Robert Ross (Lane), a truly sumptuous volume of grotesque, Beardsley-like drawings, some of them in color but most of them in black-and-white, by the Russian-Spanish-English-German artist who uses that pseudonym. And “The Book of the Epic,” by B. A. Guerber (Lippincott), a diligent summary of all the great sagas of the world, from the Odyssey and the Book of Job to “Jerusalem Delivered” and “Paradise Lost.” And “Women and Morality,” by four authors (Laurentian Press), a sharp and devastating attack upon the plupious buncombe that vice crusaders, sex “hygienists’’ and other such frauds now pour out so copiously. This finishes the so-called “serious’’ books that I have found readable: the rest may be wise and profitable, but I cannot get them down.

The printed plays of the month include a new volume of Strindberg translations by Edith and Warner Oland (Luce), a poetic comedy by Josephine Preston Peabody, and the first two volumes of a series to be issued under the auspices of the Drama League of America. It is sincerely to be hoped that the college town owlishness of the latter organization will not prove a crippling handicap to its enterprise. The plays it offers at the start are “Kindling,” by Charles Kenyon, and “A Thousand Years Ago,” by Percy Mackaye (Doubleday-Page). The first is a serious social drama in the manner of Hauptmann, and though it was probably overpraised when Margaret Illington presented it in New York two years ago, it is nevertheless an honest piece of work, with merit enough to make it stand the ordeal of reading without damage. The Mackaye play is a new variation upon the ancient Turandotte theme, hitherto brought to the stage by Carlo Gozzi, Schiller and Karl Voellmueller. Mr. Mackaye has sought to pay tribute to Gozzi by introducing a troupe of Italian comedians of the eighteenth century Commedia dell’ Arte—an experiment, it must be said, that is rather more interesting than successful. But there can be no serious quarrel with either of these opening volumes of the series, and if it maintains their level it will be well worthwhile. Not only current plays, but also unpublished pieces of yesteryear will be included, and there will be translations as well as original works. My personal hope is that Edward Knoblauch’s “The Faun” will not be overlooked: a capital piece of comedy. Nor Eugene Walter’s “The Easiest Way,” now to be had in a private edition only. (Where is that copy you were going to send me, Gene? False promiser! Lowlife!) Nor the Hoyt farces. Nor “Shenandoah.” Nor the enormously successful folkplays of Paul Armstrong, Charles Klein, Denman Thompson and George M. Cohan.

Mrs. Peabody-Marks’s comedy is called “The Wolf of Gubbio” (Houghton-Mifflin), and is cast in free verse that is anything but poetic. On page 43 “here” is rhymed with “idea”’; on page 142 there is a chorus which consists solely of the word “star” ten times repeated! Such pointless repetitions are numerous. The ‘“‘prologue,”’ for example, is literally as follows:

San Francesco! San Francesco! D’Assisi! D’Assisi! D’Assisi!

I get no joy, I am sorry to say, out of this college yell style of poetry, nor am I much stimulated by the play itself. It deals vaguely with a Holy Night miracle in the little Italian town of Gubbio, seven hundred years ago, and is fortunately impossible of performance. Even worse is “Peach Bloom,” by Northrop Morse (Medical Review of Reviews), a horrible example of the “white slave” drama now so popular. The plot holds fast to the orthodox model. Hildegarde Morris, the young daughter of a college professor, is seized by white slavers on the public street and locked up in their rococo and horrendous den. As usual, a sentimental inmate tries to aid her escape and, as usual, she is held under double guard to await the commands of a wealthy debauchee. But this debauchee, when he bobs up at last, is not her father at all, nor even her brother Jim—wherein, it will be observed, Mr. Morse violates all the traditions of such garbage and plays a joke on its gobblers. The fellow who actually comes in, far gone in liquor and in sin, is the handsome Eric Hamilton, who has proposed marriage to Hildegarde not more than six hours ago. Naturally enough, he draws a six-shooter and fights their way out of the joint, and with equal naturalness the two are married a year later. Such is the ludicrous balderdash that the New Pornography is producing! Such is the sex play at its silliest!

Of the remaining plays, the best are to be found in “Short Plays,” by Mary Macmillan (Stewart-Kidd), a series of ten one-acters for amateurs. Some of them are bald and obvious enough, but in one or two I find a very striking merit. For example, in “The Shadowed Star,” a grim little tragedy of everyday, with plain indications of the Synge influence. Aside from Synge himself, indeed, not one of the Neo-Celts has done anything better than this in prose. It is delicate, it is fanciful and yet it is thoroughly of the stage. The “Festival Piays” of Marguerite Merington (Duffield) are also of sound workmanship, but I fear that their humor and their poetry will be rather beyond the comprehension of the children playing them. The trouble with “Barsoa,” by H. O. Stechhan (Fly), is that it is overlong. Prodding the actors with red-hot pokers, it would probably be difficult to get them through it in less than four hours. But it shows care in its presentation of history and a considerable dramatic sense, and it heads in a profitable direction. Why, indeed, have our dramatists been so little attracted by the lush romance of Latin America? So far as I know, Frederic Arnold Kummer has been the only one to explore the field. What gorgeous melodrama the Caribbean towns must have seen in the days of Montbars, Harry Morgan and Bartolomeo de Portuguez! What rip-snorting plays might be made out of their doings today! And what superb grand opera librettos! If you remember the first act of Kummer’s “The Painted Woman,” can’t you imagine Mary Garden in that hammock, plucking a property guitar, cooing a voluptuous habanera?

Little space for novels remains; but, fortunately enough, those in hand at the moment are not of a sort to demand copious praise. G. K. Chesterton’s “The Flying inn” (Lane) is extremely amusing for a hundred pages, and less amusing for another hundred, and after that frankly tiresome. As usual, the author battles valiantly for his two pets, Christianity and alcohol, the handmaidens of civilization. All the action revolves around Humphrey Pump, a patriotic English innkeeper, who, when a prohibition law is passed by Parliament, loads his inn sign, a keg of rum and a Cheddar cheese upon a donkey cart and proceeds to flee the constabulary. Every time he stops, he sets up his sign and opens his inn. Upon this framework of farce Mr. Chesterton has hung a vast fabric of paradox and argumentation, in prose and verse. Every character in the story is enormously disputative. There is a Moslem missionary who tries to prove that everything thoroughly English, including even the inn signs, is Mohammedan in origin. There is an oratorical English peer who dreams of an amalgamation of all religions. There is an Irish soldier of fortune who retires from the throne of Ithaca to do battle for the menaced public house of the British Isles. There are various attendant poets, secretaries, lovely heroines, health faddists, cubist painters and low comedy journalists, all spouting sophistries sixteen hours a day. I think you will like the interludes of song, as I have. Mr. Chesterton has never written more amusing burlesque verse.

H. G. Wells’s “The Passionate Friends”’ (Harper) is not exactly dull, for it would be impossible for Wells to be dull if he tried, but compared to such things as “The New Machiavelli’’ and “Tono-Bungay.” It is certainly lacking in grip and brilliance. It is supposed to be the confession of a young father, written for his son to read in after years, probably as a warning against women. But it turns out to be nothing more than a somewhat incredible tale of intrigue, with the suicide of the woman as its climax. Little of Wells’s usually acute vivisection of men and ideas is visible; it is his worst work since he abandoned the Jules Verne romance for the serious novel. Nor is there anything to arouse enthusiasm in “A Changed Man,” by Thomas Hardy (Harper), a collection of twelve short stories and novelettes, some of them going back more than thirty years. I can find only the commonplace qualities in most of these pieces. At least one better story is in “The Toe and Other Tales,” by Alexander Harvey (Nennerley), to wit, “The Toe,” itself, a capital example of the grotesque in fiction, well worthy to be set beside some of the sardonic stories of Andrieff. Further on, Mr. Harvey descends to mere horrors, but here, at least, he achieves a really distinguishable piece of work. There is good stuff, too, in the ‘‘Graphics” of Harris Merton Lyon (Reedy), a book of fifteen sombre tales, original in their point of view and sound in their craftsmanship.

Trade goods! ‘“‘The After House,” by Mary Roberts Rinehart (Houghton-Mifflin), a chronicle of sanguinary doigs aboard a private yacht—three murders by a religious maniac—a total lack of Mrs. Rinehart’s customary humor. “Old Valentines,” by Munson Havens (Houghton-Mifflin), a story of young love—sweet, obvious, flaccid. “The Spider’s Web,” by Reginald Wright Kauffman (Moffat-Yard), another contribution to the literature of the uplift, the target this time being the Money Power instead of the White Slave Trust. “The Law of Life,” by Carl Werner (Dodd-Mead), in which we encounter a heroine who swears that she will not marry any man who has lost his virtue—talky, bubbly stuff, soothing to old maids. “The Hat Shop,” by Mrs. C. S. Peel (Lanz), an intimate glimpse of the goings-on in such an establishment in the West End of London. “The Witness for the Defense,” by A. E. W. Mason (Scribner), a mystery story by a very skillful fictioneer, hitherto seen as a play. “Pidgin Island,” by Harold MacGrath (Bobbs-Merrill), a tale of treasure and amour. “The Gay Adventure,” by Richard Bird (Bobbs-Merrill), a fantastic farce in the Locke manner—excellent diversion, indeed, for a rainy Sunday afternoon. ‘‘The Dominant Passion,” by Marguerite Bryant (Duffield), the story of four geniuses—overwritten, but with its moments. “The Irresistible Intruder,” by William Caine (Lane), the story of a delightful boy.

And so they go, each in its elegant slip cover, each with its chromatic pictures of entrancing heroine and tall, slim hero. This is all we shall have to do with novels, by the way, until June, for May is consecrated to the poets. But before saying good-bye to them, even temporarily, let me commend “After All,” by Mary Cholmondeley (Appleton), a most palatable mixture of the sour and the sweet—the Regina of “Ghosts” set down in the midst of a soothing English countryside—in brief, a tale which meets all the current demand for sexual hazards and deviltries, but is yet saved and mellowed by good humor and good writing.