MOVIES AND MOTORS, MEN AND WOMEN

IV.  Madeline of the Movies:  A Photoplay done back
      into Words

V. The Call of the Carburettor; or, Mr. Blinks and
      his Friends

VI.  The Two Sexes, in Fives or Sixes
      A Dinner-party Study

VII.  The Grass Bachelor’s Guide With Sincere Apologies
      to the Ladies’ Periodicals

VIII.  Every Man and his friends.  Mr. Crunch’s Portrait
      Gallery (as Edited from his Private Thoughts)

IX.  More than Twice-told Tales; or, Every Man his Own
      Hero

X. A Study in Still Life—­My Tailor

PEACE, WAR, AND POLITICS

XI.  Germany from Within Out

XII.  Abdul Aziz has His:  An Adventure in the Yildiz
      Kiosk

XIII.  In Merry Mexico

XIV.  Over the Grape Juice; or, The Peacemakers

XV.  The White House from Without In

TIMID THOUGHTS ON TIMELY TOPICS

XVI.  Are the Rich Happy?

XVII.  Humour as I See It

Follies in Fiction

I. Stories Shorter Still

Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still.  The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and check it.  Any of the stories below, if left to soak overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY

Hanged by A hair
or A murder mystery minimised

The mystery had now reached its climax.  First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered.  Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.

It was therefore time to call in the great detective.

He gave one searching glance at the corpse.  In a moment he whipped out a microscope.

“Ha! ha!” he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man’s coat.  “The mystery is now solved.”

He held up the hair.

“Listen,” he said, “we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands.”

The inexorable chain of logic was complete.

The detective set himself to the search.

For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears.  The man was about to go on board the Gloritania.

The detective followed him on board.