of a certain strain that produces Pennys dark of countenance and incalculable of conduct.  This recurrence is shown in three examples:  the first, Howart Penny, in the days when men wore powder and the Penny forge had just been started in what was then a British colony; the next, Jasper, involved in a murder trial in the sixties; and; last of the black Pennys, another Howart, in whom the family energy has thinned to a dilettante appreciation of the arts, dying alone amongst his collections.  You can see from this outline that the book is incidentally liable to confound the skipper, who may find himself confronted with (apparently) the same character tying a periwig on one page and hiring a taxi on another.  I am mistaken though if you will feel inclined to skip a single page of a novel at once so original and well-told.  As a detail of criticism I had the feeling that the “blackness” of the Penny exceptions would have shown up better had we seen more of the family in its ordinary rule; but of the power behind Mr. HERGESHEIMER’S work there can be no question.  He is, I am sure, an artist upon a quite unusual scale, from whom great things may be anticipated.

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If neither book of short stories before me is what Americans call “the goods,” I can, at any rate, say that Ancient Mariners (MILLS AND BOON) does infinite credit to Mr. MORLEY ROBERTS’S imagination.  These yarns of seafaring men are salt with the savour of the sea and with the language thereof.  Of the seven my favourite is “Potter’s Plan,” which not only contains the qualities to be found in the other half-dozen, but also has an ingenuity all its own.  But perhaps you will prefer “A Bay Dog-Watch,” as coming home to the general bosom, for it deals with a ferocious hunt after matches which recalls the deadly days of the shortage.  Of the five stories in Mr. WARWICK DEEPING’S Countess Glika (CASSELL) the best is “Bitter Silence.”  Here the author deals with essentials, and gives us a tale entirely free from artificiality.  The remaining stories are marred by their lack of naturalness; but Mr. DEEPING is never at a loss for incident, and he can write dialogue which is often gay and sometimes witty.

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[Illustration:  THE PASSING OF THE COUPON. Our Grocer (gone dotty with joy).  “SHE LOVES ME—­SHE LOVES ME NOT—­SHE LOVES ME!”]