a lady called Becky Sharp dazzled, hoodwinked, tricked the has a thoroughly sound idea that the kind of fact that it London world. She was, I dare say, a wickeder woman is not important to know about London is that on a very than Mrs. WHARTON'S Undine, but her historian was, in clear day one may have a view of the Crystal Palace if one spite of himself, fair to her. Mrs. WHARTON is never fair looks straight down Bouverie Street. The Sage who lives to her victim. The brilliance of the book remains; whether in this sacred congested thoroughfare has never noticed it, it be finance, social contrasts, the Old World or the New, and, like Mr. ADCOCK, doesn't want to. An index makes French châteaux or American hotels, Mrs. WHARTON'S this little volume a lazily convenient occasion of happy talent can most ably reveal them for us; but it is a hard reminiscence.

and a cruel revelation.

What a passion for untempered veracity seems to have I did not see The Witness for the Defence (HODDER AND taken hold of our novelists! The latest professor of the STOUGHTON) in its previous incarnation as a play at the system of withholding nothing is Mr. WILLIAM HEWLETT, St. James's Theatre. Hitherto I have always regretted whose new novel, Telling the Truth (SECKER), sufficiently this, but I hope Mr. A. E. W. MASON will not misunder- explains its character by its title. In his introductory pages stand me when I say that my regret is now banished. The Mr. HEWLETT almost vehemently protests that no considerareason is that I have been able to approach the book with tion shall prevent him from giving us the facts, even if, like an appreciation unhampered by those worrying memories GALILEO, he shall "suffer the penalty of public condemnaof the theatre about which I have spoken before in similar tion." Really I don't think he need have worried. These cases. As a result I have enjoyed it greatly. The rule is devoted truth-tellers always a little remind me of the here that good plays do not make good novels, though authors of DICKENS's Holiday Romances, who" fought his desperate are slow to believe this, and perhaps the fact of getting double profit out of one idea does not serve to quicken their apprehension. Anyhow, I am glad to find The Witness for the Defence a triumphant exception. It makes quite a good novel,! picturesque, alive and convincing. In one way the story has gained much by its liberation from dramatic fetters We are now enabled to see something more of the previous relationship between Thresk and Stella, and this greatly helps the grip of the subsequent developments. You probably know what these are. Α story does not enjoy a successful run in the West-End, and goodness knows how many provincial tours, and retain much of the charm

Professional Palmist (absently). "THE MOUNT OF JUPITER IS RE-
MARKABLY DEVELOPED. IT DENOTES AN EXCESSIVE LOVE OF POWER,

"
A TYRANNICAL DISPOSITION AND EXTREME EGOTISM.

way hand to hand to the lane," being "so fortunate as to meet nobody." Because, despite an occasional much-proclaimed movement of the libraries, no one is really very greatly concerned to interfere with them. Anyhow, the truth about Mr. HEWLETT'S central figure is that he was a cad; that he was a sentimental egoist as well does not alter this primal fact about him. After a boyhood during which his character causes a good deal of wellfounded uneasiness to the authorities, he runs away from home and becomes first an actor, then (sounding deeper depths) a popular novelist. It is in this capathat he is brought into city, as the idol of society, contact with his soul-mate,

of mystery. Still, Mr. MASON and his publishers were no | who is, as you might expect, already the wife of another. doubt right in supposing that you would care to hear a Honestly, what I think must have been the matter with little more intimately about the characters, and "their whys and wherefores." And to the benighted who, like myself, have not met them before, I would say, Do it Now.

Hugh Middlecomb was a too-fervent admiration for the heroes of Messrs. H. G. WELLS and COMPTON MACKENZIE. This may explain his taking his bruised spirit to Cornwall in the final book, and thus giving his own author the opportunity for some pleasant descriptive writing. To be fair, the story has also some good passages of stage and journalistic life; but, on the whole, I hardly found myself in agreement with Mr. HEWLETT about its importance.

In The Booklover's London (METHUEN) Mr. A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK sets out on a pleasant gossipy round of the town in the track of characters out of his favourite imaginative literature, from BEN JONSON to GEORGE GISSING. I am afraid I suspect him of a little self-deception when he protests that in this or that place the imaginary folk throng about him and are more real than the whistling errandboys and pompous, rotund merchants who are there in actual prosaic fact. It may, of course, be even so. More likely 'tis a harmless device to put his spirits in key for his enterprise and is justified by its entirely amiable results. One of these is to send you from the quotations with which the book is freely embellished back to the originals to renew This would no doubt be the body of the mare, the animal their acquaintance. And that, no doubt, is one of the having been destroyed previous to the police court proceedauthor's benevolent purposes. The chief of them, I guess, ings. (Our contemporary's actual words are "the Mayor was to please himself by indulging a hobby--which is no was destroyed," but no doubt its reporter got a wrong

"Mr. J. B. Marston, of Mold, defended, and stated that the mare and scared all the horses, which jumped about, and the mare in along with others was travelling to Chester, when a motor passed question got knocked down and thus received the injury. A large body of evidence was called for the defence."

CHARIVARIA.

THE Emperor MENELIK has died again. He never quite rallied from his previous deaths.

**

The KAISER'S dislike of the Tango is well-known. His Majesty, who has recently been suffering from a cold, has now insisted on the CROWN PRINCE ceasing to be a Danzig man.

Seizures of rifles continue to be made in Ulster. It is said that the Government intend, if they catch sufficient, to re-arm our Territorials with them.

We understand that not only is there to be no postal strike just now, but the men do not even propose to show their dissatisfaction with present conditions by refusing to accept Christmas boxes.

**

From New York comes a tale of the sale of a husband for a gold bracelet. As a husband ourselves we are pleasantly surprised to learn that we still have a value. Heaven grant that the bracelet was not of rolled gold!

**

*

We have noticed as part of the Christmas window display in a number of shops a fall of snow with exactly the same distance between each flake and its neighbours. This well-drilled snow must come, we fancy, from Germany.

A HOUSEHOLD BOON. "BUT how can I tell you of anything I want," said Philip peevishly, "when I've got two of everything, except razors, and seven of those, three safeties and four ordinary ones?"

"But aren't there any little patent contrivances I could give you that make for man's comfort and convenience?" pleaded Muriel.

"Oh, plenty," he replied. "A patent bootlace, for instance, that does itself up; a patent letter-answerer, or a patent razor that shaves me while I sleep. Those are the only kind of things I should find useful, if you could get them."

After the recent confusion between the names of the two plays, Love and Laughter and The Laughing Husband, we are not surprised that a muddleheaded friend of ours should have asked us the other day whether we had seen Wu's the Lady?"

We hear that, since the return of the prodigal "Monna Lisa," other female portraits in the Louvre have been making some very catty remarks.

The entire Press will suspend publication on Christmas Day, and an appeal is made to events of importance to make this experiment a success by kindly not happening just then.

Muriel stared at the fire and deliberated.

"Very well," she said hopefully. "I'll see what I can do."

On Christmas morning Philip found a solt parcel by his plate and Muriel looking at him with suppressed emotion.

That," she said, "is a patent contrivance which guarantees you a good start for every day and adds to the happiness of the whole household in consequence -is that the kind of thing you wanted?"

"Just," said Philip, smiling incredulously as he drew forth about four yards of green silk cord. "But how does it work?"

"You stretch it along one side of your bed, from the head to the foot."

The afternoon hunt from Clevewood was over the vale to the Hangings, and on over the hill to Yatesbury, where hounds were beaten." Those which escaped the hangings, no doubt; but surely they deserved to be spared.

"Both streams are clear and in fair order.

Grayling have been rising at midday."—Field. They'll never catch the early worm if they get up so late.

66

JACK JOHNSON's motor-car ran into a Another daring Theft. gate at a level crossing near Montreuil The Pan-American Association, a Perugia states that the Louvre has been last week, and the negro boxer was cable tells us, is considering plans for in his room in Paris for the past two years." badly punished about the head. The the erection of the tallest building in the Sunday Chronicle. gate, it is said, is to be adorned with world. The Association evidently does Can he not be persuaded to come the inscription, "I knocked out JACK not know that the tallest building in over to England and steal the Albert JOHNSON.' the world has already been erected. Memorial?