The Book of Months E.EBenson i THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES The Book of Months BY THE SAME AUTHOR Crown 8vo., cloth, price 6s. SCARLET AND HYSSOP THE LUCK OF THE VAILS MAMMON AND CO. THE PRINCESS SOPHIA LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 20 & ax, Bedford Street, W.C. The Book of Months By E. F. Benson London William Heinemann 1903 I'lit's /■'dition enjoys, copyright in nil countries signatory to the Hone 'y, a n,l is not to he imported into the United Statet 0/ Amn ■■• /5f 06 1~ TO MY MOTHER April May October CONTENTS I'ASE I January ...... February - - - - - 23 March - - - - . - 49 79 97 June - - - - - -121 Jul* i39 August ...... ^5 September - - - - . - 197 225 November ...... 251 December ---... 273 The publisher is informed by the Proprietors of Condfs Fluid that their preparation contains no permanganate of potash. In making this correction he desires to express regret if thi statement on page 83 has done them an injury. JANUARY JANUARY Thick yellow fog, and in consequence electric light to dress by and breakfast by, was the open- ing day of the year. Never, to anyone who looks at this fact in the right spirit, did a year dawn more characteristically. The denseness, the utter inscrutability of the face of that which should be, was never better typified. We blindly groped on the threshold of the future, feeling here for a bell- handle, here for a knocker, while the door still stood shut. Then, about mid-day, sudden com- motions shook the vapours ; dim silhouettes or house-roofs, promised lands perhaps, or profiled wrecks, stood suddenly out against swirling orange whirlpools of mist ; and from my window, which commanded a double view up and down Oxford Street, I looked out over the crawling traffic, with an interest, as if in the unfolding of some dramatic plot, on the battle of the skies. From sick dead 3 A 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS yellow the colour changed to gray, and for a few moments the street seemed lit by a dawn of April ; then across the pearly tints came a sunbeam, lighting them with sudden opalescence. Then the smoke from the house opposite, which had been ascending slowly, like a tired man climbing stairs, was plucked away by a breeze, and in two minutes the whole street was a blaze of primrose- coloured sunshine. All that week I was work-bound in London — a place where, as everyone knows, there are forty- eight hours in every twenty-four. The reason for this is obvious. It is impossible to sit idly in a chair in London ; it is impossible (almost) to read a book, and it is (happily) quite impossible to write one. Hence the hours are multiplied. The sound and spectacle of life induces a sort of intoxication of the mind. Ten yards of Piccadilly is a volume, and the Circus an improper epic. Hence the impossibility of reading ; the books are in the flowing tides that jostle from house-wall to house-wall, and they are vastly more entertain- ing than anything that publishers have ever had the good fortune to bring out. 4 JANUARY Now, people who are incapable of reading book- print — of which the enormous mass is very sorry stuff — are held to be uneducated ; but it seems to me that people who cannot read, or at any rate con- jecture at, this splendid human print are much more ignorant. For it is here in these places, alive with the original words and phrases out of which all books are made, that there lies the key to all books that are worth reading at all. At any rate, here lies the material ; it is here, and nowhere else, that the chef does his marketing. There are, however, several rules to be observed if you would read the original. The first is, that you must attend with all your might ; the book, so to speak, shuts automatically if you cease to attend. The second is, that you must at a moment's notice be ready to pity and to praise. The third — and perhaps the most important of all — is, that you must never be shocked. For the whole attitude of the observer is covered by pity or praise. The Great Author does not want his moral condemnation, and, in addition to this, there is nothing so blinding to one's self as being shocked. It is like looking through a telescope at one point only, and that 5 THE BOOK OF MONTHS probably wrongly focussed ; for it is focussed by one's own individual code, which is almost cer- tainly wrong. It is Human Life you are looking at ; if that is not good enough for you, go and look at something else. There are plenty of dull things in the world, but remember always that, if you find other people dull, it is only a sign that a dull person is present. But if you are to read the book Living, come humble and alert. Try to catch the point of every phrase, for of this you may be sure — that there is a point. You will find there, thank God ! many pages that will make you laugh — laugh, that is, properly, with sheer childish, un- reflecting amusement ; you will find there things that will make you think ; and you will certainly find there things that will make you want to weep. And if we knew a little, instead of knowing nothing, we should probably — no, certainly — fill on our knees, and thank God for that also. One of each of these occurred to me to-day. The first was when 1 was coming out of the club with a friend on our way to dinner. An obsequious porter held the club door open, an obsequious page-boy stood by our glittering 6 JANUARY hansom, with a hand on the wheel. My friend had an opulent appearance and wore a fur coat. On the pavement were standing two exceedingly small and ragged boys, and one of them whose hair drooped over his eyes like a Skye terrier, seeing this resplendent exit, put his thumbs in the place where the armholes of his waistcoat would have been, had the merry little devil had one, and, with his nose in the air, said very loud to the other, ' Whare are we doining to-night, Bill?' The second made one laugh at first, but think afterwards, and it was thus : At the corner of Dover Street there lay a heap of mud and street sweepings, and as we drew up just opposite, blocked by an opposing tide of carriages in Piccadilly, a small, very dapper little gentleman in dress-clothes stepped into the middle of this muck-heap, with the result that one of his dress-pumps was drawn off his unfortunate foot with a ' cloop ' and stuck there. On to it there swooped a vulture of the highway, a lad of about twenty, who picked it out, and made off down Dover Street with it. Now, what good was one shoe to him ? Would he not have done better to have wiped it carefully 7 THE BOOK OF MONTHS on his coat, which really could not have deteri- orated farther, and chanced a tip from the dapper little gentleman ? Or was the instinct of stealing so strong that he never stopped to think ? One would have supposed that a tip was a practical certainty. The third sight was merely a matter for tears. I walked back from dinner, and my way lay up Piccadilly again. At a populous corner stood a very stout elderly woman, dressed in violent and ridiculous colours. Her hair was golden, her eyebrows broad, thick and vilely drawn, her cheeks so burned with rouge that one blushed. She addressed every passer-by in endearing terms. None regarded her. That was quite right ; but the pity of her standing there on this squally night, with her horrid mission and her total ill- success ! Yes, it is difficult to thank God for that. After five days I got deliverance from this entrancing slavery, and, like a cork from a bottle, flew to Grindelwald. The journey I remember as a dreadful dream, for I had a cold so bad that all sense of taste, smell, and most of hearing and 8 JANUARY feeling, had passed from me, and I seemed to myself to be a rough deal board being sent by train, and turned out into a drizzling night at what appeared to be mere cowsheds on the line, simply for the purpose of declaring that I had no spirit or lace about me. Spirit! The Queen of Sheba when she had seen Solomon in all his glory had more. As to lace, that diaphanous material seriously occupied my waking dreams as we mounted the Jura. Was there anything in my face that suggested lace, I wondered, or did lace frillings peep out from my trousers? Anyhow, why lace? I was really almost anxious to declare five hundred cigarettes, but nobody suggested such a thing. Then The new heaven and the new earth, an earth covered with powdery snow, thatched here and there by pines, and reaching beyond all power of thought, by glacier and snowfield and rocks too steep for the settling of the snow, into the pinna- cles of the Eiger and the Wetterhorn. From ridge to ridge the eye followed, lost in amazement at the wonder of the earth and the greatness of its design. Austere and silent rose the virgin 9 THE BOOK OF MONTHS snows, and more silent, growing from words to exclamation, and from exclamation to silence itself, one's wonder. There, out of the void and formless pulp which was once the world, they were set, barren, fruitless, useless, and that is the wonder of them and their glory. Centuries have been as but seconds in the life of an idle man in the forming of them ; for centuries that have been to them but the winking of an eye they have raised their immemorial crests, and the centuries shall be as the sea-sand before they crumble. O ye Mountains and Hills, praise ye the Lord! Every day you praise Him. Now, this "Book of Months " is almost certainly worth nothing, anyhow, and I take this oppor- tunity to inform critics so, in case (as is not likely) they have the slightest doubt about it. But if they and I are wrong, it will be because we have both overlooked the possible value of a true document — true, that is, as far as I personally am able to make it true. Therefore I will state at once that for the next four weeks the childish pursuit of making correct lines and edges on the ice occupied me much more, except on a few IO JANUARY occasions, than all the mountains, all the heavenly blue of the sky, or the divine radiance of the marching sun. Instead of attending to those big and beautiful things, I got up, day after day, full of anxious thoughts, and had I been assured that these anxieties would never trouble me again on condition that I never again looked at the Eiger, or the scarlet finger of the Finster-Aarhorn that caught the sunset long after the sun had set to us, I would quite certainly have closed with the bargain. Those who do not know what a clean outside-back-counter means can have no voice in this affair, since they are not acquainted with the subject-matter of it, but those who do will, I believe, extend to me their pitying sympathy. For no known reason, I desired to make these and other turns, which when made are of no conceivable use to anybody, and full of anxious thoughts, which violent collisions with the elusive material on which I performed fully justified, I proceeded to devote the hours of light to these utterly indefensible pursuits. I wished to execute a movement in which the skate left a certain mark on the ice, and no other (I am alluding, of ii THE BOOK OF MONTHS course, to involuntary change of edge), and to make these and other marks on the ice (continuous loops, bracket-eight, and a few more, for the sake of the curious) I signed a bond, so to speak, for three weeks of my short mortal life. All morn- ing, that is to say, 1 struggled with these evanescent scratchings, ate a hurried lunch, and struggled again till it was dark. Really, it is very odd, and I hope to do the same next winter. I am perfectly aware that I could have spent my time much better, or, at any rate, tried to. I knew that at the time ; but I did not care then, and I do not care now. There were sane intervals, however. For in- stance, one Saturday evening it began to snow. Now, I see nothing conceivably wrong in skating on Sunday, and am unable to comprehend the position of those who do. But it is certainly wrong to skate on Sunday when it will spoil the ice on Monday, and on this particular Sunday I went to church in the morning, and afterwards took a sandwich lunch from the hotel, and, tying it securely to a toboggan, sat myself insecurely on the toboggan, and went alone — that was an 12 JANUARY essential part of the plan — down past the church and through the village, through fields of white snow that spouted as the toboggan met them, even as the spray spouts round the bows of a liner. In nothing, I suppose, does a man (unless he be M. Santos Dumont) come nearer to the ecstasy of flight, some low skimming flight that follows the contour of the ground as swallows when storm is imminent. So went I down an ever-steepening mile, finishing at the end just by the side of the bridge that crosses the stream from the glacier. The frost had been severe for the last week, and this was nearly covered over with lids of ice that grew out from backwaters and extended almost from bank to bank. Wherever a stone stood in mid-current, there below it had the ice first gathered, groping its way downstream till the cold feeler reached another stone. Then, already half established, it had broadened and broadened till a third anchorage met it. But in certain swift places the water still ran unchecked, its flow, of course, greatly diminished with the lesser melting of the glacier in winter, but still busy, busy, seek- ing the sea with steadfast purpose. Round the *3 THE BOOK OF MONTHS banks and in the bed itself of the stream grew an immense company of alders covered completely with the inimitable confectionery of frost, a forest of spiked branches. Then mounting again, I passed up a long gentle slope by a few outlying chalets, and, having come out of the shadow of the Eiger, sat down to lunch. The air was utterly windless, the frost so keen that not a flake of snow clung to my clothes, yet through the glory of that pellucid air the sun struck so hot that a coat was altogether a super- fluity. Eastwards the Wetterhorn rose in glacier and snowfield, and its superb and patient beauty, as of some noble woman waiting for the man she loves, struck me with a pang of delight. Thereafter still climbing, I entered the pine-woods below the Scheidegg, where the sun drew out a thousand woodland and resinous smells, as if odorous summer instead of midwinter held sway. Alone ! 1 had intended to be alone, but never was a man in more delectable company. Trees, glimpses of the gorgeous dome above them, drifts of driven snow, were my companions, while, if one grew overbold, there was the Eiger to hazard 14 JANUARY a respectful remark to, and the sun itself to be wor- shipped. On no other day, indeed, that I can remem- ber have I felt so strong a sympathy with Parsees. High it swung, benignant, and all for the fir-trees and me. Then rising higher, I came to the edge of the wood and the beginning of the snowfields again, and, resting for a moment, did an exceedingly childish thing. Underneath a piece of spreading root of the last tree of that heavenly wood I hid a Bryant and May's match-box containing a stick of chocolate, an English sixpence, two nickel coins of ten centimes, a short piece of pencil, and four matches. These I dedicate to the wayfarer should he need a light. Also I should ask him to write his name with the pencil and put it in the match-box, and, if he feels as foolish as I, add some small object of no value. Next year I will go there again, and make some further striking additions to the cache. The tree is a large one on the left of the path, and quite notably the last in the wood. My initials are rudely carved in the piece of root directly above the cache. An intelligent traveller knowing this can hardly miss the place. *5 THE BOOK OF MONTHS Now, where shall we look for the origin of this instructive piece of foolishness? This is not a merely egotistic query, for I am perfectly certain that many sober and mature citizens like myself will feel sympathy with childishness that rejoices in such caches as I made on the slopes of the Scheidegg. Is it that we still preserve, even in this well-civilized and restauranted century, some cell in our brain which even now obeys the prudent instincts of some remote cave-dwelling ancestor, and do we now in play imitate his serious pre- cautions ? Or — and I like to think this better — have we still, in spite of our sober maturity, some remnants still of an heritage more priceless than cave-dwelling ancestors, namely, the lingering joys of our own childhood ? On the whole, the evidence points this way, especially when I consider in con- nection with this certain other survivals, like that of { talking French.' Here I feel that I may be treading on alien ground ; the cache habit, I know, is not rare, but I have not at present met anyone who ' talks French,' of which the manner is as follows. Everyone, I suppose, has moments of sheer physical enjoyment. I need mention two only : 16 JANUARY the one, getting into bed, with legs curled up, ere yet the freezing sheets can be encountered ; the other, when very cold getting into a hot bath, a bath, that is to say, so hot that it is on the border between bliss and anguish, when, in fact, to move is to scream. On these occasions — for loneliness is essential, — I 'talk French'; that is to say, streams ot gibberish flow in a hushed voice from my lips, in the form of dialogue, and anyone present would hear remarkable things of this nature : (With deep anxiety) ' Usti Icibon ?' (Reassuringly) ' Mimi molat isto pacher.' (Reassured) 'Kaparando guilli. Amatinat skolot.' I blush to reproduce more. But I long to know if anybody else ' talks French.' I want to talk it with somebody, and compare vocabularies. A long colloquy was held that afternoon, sitting in the sun, after the cache was made, and then towards sunset I started to go back through the pine-wood with dim but welcome thoughts of bears and brigands lying in wait on each side the path. One corner I remember I particularly feared, for low-growing bushes bordering the path might conceal almost anything. That I had good reason 17 B THE BOOK OF MONTHS to fear it I soon found out, though I had feared it for wrong reasons, for my toboggan threw me with reckless gaiety into the middle of those same bushes. In fact, for the first half-mile the track was abominable ; bare stones and tree-roots alternated with passages of breathless rapidity ; never have I experienced a quicker succession of violences. But as the wood grew less dense the texture of the going became more uniform, and for the last mile I hissed downwards with ever-increasing speed and smoothness through the pallor of the snow-bright dusk. Large stars beamed luminous overhead, and from scattered cottages sprang the twinkling lights, showing that all were home from the frozen fields and safe within walls. Then, wonder of wonders ! the full moon rose over the top of the Wetterhorn with a light as clear as running water and as soft as sleep, making complete with its perfection this perfect day. The other interlude from this rage of tracing useless marks on the ice was a funeral. The funeral was that of Slam's kitten, though the kitten was not really Slam's at all. But, to go back to the beginning of things, it is necessary 18 JANUARY that you should know who Slam was. Her real name was Evelyn Helen Anastasia, and goodness knows what ; but what matters more is that she was a child six years and one month old, freckle- faced, snub-nosed, devoted to animals and the out- side edge, and by far the most popular person in the hotel. It was the outside edge originally that had brought us together, for she had told me that I didn't do it properly, and, very kindly showing me how, she had fallen heavily on the ice. As I picked her up, she said : ' You see what I mean, don't you ? Let me show you again.' Under her tuition I improved, and, what was more important, our friendship ripened. I am proud to think that I was the only person who ever heard about the kitten, which had followed Slam — I am sure I don't wonder — with pitiful mewings, down from the Happy Valley, an owner- less beast that would have touched hearts more hard than Slam's. She kept it in a cupboard in her room and fed it with cake. This I learned on the second day of the kitten's imprisonment. That evening it died. I will pass over Slam's 19 b 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS lamentations, and the wealth of falsehood by which I convinced her that a diet of cake in an airless cupboard was the only thing that could have saved it. Then, as it was dead, it had to be buried, still without the cognizance of Slam's nurse, whom I feared. 1 I don't want a lot of people,' said Slam. ' It would be much nicer if we buried her quietly. So when nurse is at dinner I will bring her down in my hat.' Meantime I had procured a cardboard box, and from Slam's hat the kitten passed into its coffin. The coffin was put on our toboggan — for Slam and I were going to lunch out — and the catafalque left the hotel. Slam put her hand into mine — a compliment that only children can pay — and we debated about the cemetery. I personally inclined to the river- bed at the bottom of the valley, but Slam would have none of it. ' Up above,' she said, ' it is cleaner ;' and, though it was all pretty clean, I assented. • Then we can eat our lunch and toboggan down,' she added. This was common-sense ; to walk up 20 JANUARY after the funeral would be depressing ; we might recover our lightness of spirit if we left the tobogganing till afterwards. On the way up, through the village, that is, and towards the glacier, the talk turned on serious subjects. Did I believe that animals would have a resurrection ? Why did God make them if they were just to die and be finished? Again, if they were to have a resurrection, was it not proper to bury them properly ? Thus we arrived at the cemetery. Four pine-trees stood there, with snow drifted high between them ; the bene- diction of the sun hallowed the place ; never had anyone a more virgin tomb. We scooped out the snow down to soil-level, and dropped the box into the excavation. Then with pious hands we covered it up, and on the top of the cairn planted sprigs taken from the pines. ' And now I will say my prayers,' said Slam. She knelt down in the snow, and, even with the fear of her nurse before my eyes, I could say nothing to dissuade her, but knelt by her and un- covered my head. And then Slam said the Lord's Prayer, and asked that she might be a good girl 21 THE BOOK OF MONTHS always, and prayed that God might bless her father and mother and nurse and me. Do you know what it is to be remembered in the prayers of a child ? Then she paused : ' and the kitten,' she added. And I said ' Amen.' So there the kitten lies, between the sky and the beautiful snow-clad earth. Pines whisper about it, and the Wetterhorn and Eiger watch over its resting-place. And Slam said her prayers there. What follows ? As far as I am concerned, this : I believe that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, and that there will be one day a great healing and comforting. And when on that day, mysteriously, unintelligibly, that little body, which meantime has fed the grasses and the alpine flowers of the place, comes to itself and is alive again, I believe that a happy little kitten will stand between those four pine- trees, lost no longer. And Slam and I will recognise it. And the kitten — who knows ? — will recognise us, and Slam will say again, in the phrase that is so often on her lips : 1 Oh, it is nice !' 22 FEBRUARY 23 FEBRUARY A quantity of wholly uninteresting things have happened. I have with infinite rackings of thought made £1^0 on the Stock Exchange, and never was money more hardly earned. I am also well on the way to lose the whole of it. If, as seems highly probable, I do, never will money be more hardly lost. I have returned from Grindel- wald to find a London of the most icy cold, followed by a London of the most sickening tepidity, swimming in mud, the colour of which and the texture of which is that of nightmares. A pallid daylight strikes through rods of rain, the streets smell of mackintosh, and an un- fathomable depression prevails. The County Council have seized this unrivalled opportunity for taking up the whole of the principal thorough- fares, and it is impossible to get anywhere with- out going in a totally different direction. I 2 5 THE BOOK OF MONTHS played bridge last night, revoked and was not detected, which argues a mournful level of in- telligence both in one's self and one's adversaries, and went to bed only to dream of a fifth suit, which, dimly veiled, swallowed aces of trumps, or any such cards, like oysters, a gulp and no more, and woke to find the same dark streaming and leaden heavens. It is the weather that with me is chiefly re- sponsible both for these despondencies and for sky -scraping spirits. And I know of nothing so hard to bear as weather-depressions. One cannot by employment of idleness get rid of them, so long as the conditions that gave the depressions birth still continue. And of all weather- depressions the one that occurs when spring struggles to be born from dying winter is the most despondent. One's body, especially after a month in Switzerland, has been adjusted to low temperatures, and the effect of the change is the same as that produced by a tepid bath in the morning instead of a cold one. Briskness of body and spirit alike vanish, and to-day, though I am accustomed to these annual visitations, I went 26 FEBRUARY so far as to take my temperature, there being, as I well knew, nothing whatever the matter with me. Of course it was normal. This transition-weather has now lasted a week, but there have been certain intervals and allevia- tions. One of these occurred last Sunday. I went in the afternoon to the Oratory at Brompton, and heard that service of Vespers and Benediction which, whether mumbled unintelligibly by a shabby priest in an empty church, or conducted with that splendid sense of { form ' which char- acterizes the Oratory, never fails to give me a feeling of ' uplifting ' which I cannot hope to express. There in the morning has the symbol of that Divine Mystery been laid on the Lord's Table, and there after the candles have been lit, and the worshipper cleansed by the incense, is again revealed the ' Salutaris Hostia,' the ; sign, outward and visible, of the Love through which exist- ence is. Then 1 crossed the park, and by degrees the unutterable languor of the early spring began to thaw its way back into me, when suddenly I saw a large tract of grass white with snowdrops that 27 THE BOOK OF MONTHS had budded and blossomed in the last few days. Pointed leaves with the white line one knows so well had first pricked the ground ; then the weak, soft flower had followed, led upwards from the buried bulb by the instinct it must obey, for no purpose — who knows? — but to remind a stupid person or two like me that there were other things in the world besides him. And I swear to you that as I looked I blushed with shame. To-morrow I shall go and look at them again, for I am afraid the memory is no longer medicinal. Depend upon it, there is nothing so morbid as to encourage in one's self ' questionings.' Any average ordinary person who walks down a London street, and for five minutes devotes him- self to the problem as to what is the meaning of all these swarming people, what do they make of their lives, what is the ultimate outcome — it is easy enough to find words, but quite unnecessary — will reduce himself to a state of maudlin incom- petence in a week's time. It is emphatically not one's business to be cheaply vague in this manner, and the man who helps a stumbler — be he drunk or sober — across a street, or rings a bell for a 28 FEBRUARY small child who cannot reach it, has done his duty and his part in the world's work far better that day than any philosopher who thinks a great deal and does nothing. Indeed, I doubt not that a man who makes a friend smile at some idiotic remark has better earned his daily bread than the man who has given rise to profound thought, if thought is only to end in thought. ' The world is made by the poet for the dreamer ' was said by someone — I forget who. He might just as well have said, £ The world is made by the butcher for the baker.' It is a very false estimate we should get of the world if we only looked at other people from our own standpoint. It is useless, for instance, to imagine one's self in the position of a newsboy from whom I usually buy an evening paper at the corner just outside. He is frightfully ragged. Why his coat, for instance, holds together at all is beyond my comprehension, and his boots are in a similar state of disintegration. Certainly, if it was my lot to stand at that corner earning a penny only out of every twelve papers I sold, and for the sake of earning my bread at all being com- 29 THE BOOK OF MONTHS pelled to stand there for hours in frost, rain or fog, I should quite assuredly be most unhappy. Yet nothing is falser than to imagine that he is unhappy ; he has, on the contrary, a ' frolic welcome ' for everything that comes along, and evidently circumstances which would depress what we may call the comfortable classes have no effect whatever on his spirits. On the other hand, there are things which happen to you and me every day, which we bear without undue com- plaints, that would be almost insufferable to him. He would certainly revolt at a bath in the morn- ing ; and though he would very likely be pleased at the breakfast that followed it, I feel by no means certain that he would not sooner sit on a coal-sack and chaff the nearest policeman, as he does, with his mouth bulging with large crusts. Again, I doubt whether t the bloke,' which is the name by which he is known in the neighbourhood of his stand, could live through the sort of morn- ing we live through. He would consider it so unbearably dull to have to sit in a room for hour after hour, while London and the humming streets roared outside, and read a book — or, worse, write 3° FEBRUARY one. For supposing we endue him for a moment with that sort of veneer of the mind which we call culture, literary taste, artistic taste, or what not, a thing which he does not probably possess at present, even then, should we set him down at ' Romeo and Juliet,' let us say, what will be his verdict ? Why, that he can see the thing itself every evening, and, perhaps, has acted it, too, poor little devil ! and why should he spend his time in reading a pale moonlight translation when the original jostles him ? Here at this point, of course, the literati will hold up hands of horror. Do I mean to say, they will ask, that the im- mortal tragedy I have referred to is to be brought into comparison, even for a jest, with the idylls of the street corner, with the walking out of a man with a maid, a marriage in the registry office, or, perhaps, the omission of that ceremony? Yes, if they will think, I mean all that. For why, if we consider the question more closely, does the tragedy of ' Romeo and Juliet ' strike us, and rightly, as a masterpiece? and why does the sordid account of l murder and suicide ' in the daily press strike us as a page to be turned over with a 31 THE BOOK OF MONTHS * poor thing !' shudder, if we are people of dis- cernment, but if we are only refined to be passed over in utter unconsciousness ? It is because Shakespeare showed us the terror and the tragedy of one, and we have not the genius to see the terror and the tragedy of the other. Had not Shakespeare been a man of human insight, he could never have written his plays ; but if we could see, we should find in life what he found. That he gave it in the form of drama to the world is another matter. That was because Nature — or I prefer to say God — gave a man of this humanity this power of speech as well as the sense of drama. Hundreds, I soberly believe, felt as keenly as Shakespeare felt, but are, so to speak, born dumb ; hundreds could write as Shakespeare wrote, could they but feel. It is this conjunction of the two, rare as the transit of Venus, that makes the supreme artist. To return to ■ the bloke.' All morning we have given him a translation instead of the original, and the morning over we give him lunch. He will eat largely, because for all the years he has lived it has been his instinct to eat 32 FEBRUARY all there was to eat, for fear that there would soon be nothing to eat when he wanted to eat. He will drink in immoderation for the same reason, and grow somnolent. But he is plucked from his slumber to call on someone who bores him, to be polite when he does not want to be polite, and he will return to ' dress ' in a collar that hurts him, and to eat a dinner which he does not want. That evening he will be sick, and three days later have a bilious attack. But turn from this gloomy picture to the reality. ' The bloke,' as I saw him this evening, had a huge crust stuffed into one cheek ; in the other corner of his mouth was a cigarette. There was news about a test match in Australia, and papers were going like hot cakes. His pockets were not to be trusted, and that mouth of his had eight coppers on one side, and the crust, not yet masticated, on the other. But did ' the bloke ' think about verdigris-poisoning and other in- anities? Not a bit. If there was a moment to spare, wet pennies were ejected and stowed in a pocket somewhere at the back of his trousers. If there was no moment to spare, he merely cursed 33 c THE BOOK OF MONTHS and prayed for a sixpence which got rid of five wet pennies. All the time he was shouting 1 Re-markable Collapse !' chaffing the policeman at the corner, shouting hoarse profanities to the drivers of passing buses, and ogling miles of girls of his acquaintance. Now consider, oh my cultured friend, where would you and I have been in such a crisis, which, you must remember, was a feast and a high-day to 'the bloke.' We should have retired behind a hoarding to eat our crust, and sat still — God help us — for several minutes in order to digest it. Then we should have lost the cream of the sale. Then, coyly re-entering Oxford Street, we should have murmured quaveringly, ' A Bad Score on the Colonial Side '; we should have put our pennies in the untrustworthy pocket, whence they would have slithered coldly down our legs on to the pavement. Grasping the inadequacy of this, we should have held them in our other hand, and impeded the swift passage of the papers. We should have cast apprehensive glances at the policeman for fear he should tell us to move on — he tells ' the bloke ' to move on, and 'the 34 FEBRUARY bloke' says ' Garn !' — we should have frowned at bus-drivers who nearly ran over us, and made a feint of taking their numbers. We should have made a quantity of depressing reflections about the young women in London, so bold and bad- mannered, and as an upshot we should have sold, with infinite depression, one-fifth of what ' the bloke' sells with a gusto indescribable. And what is, perhaps, worst of all, we should have prayed that evening, if we were not too sleepy, for all the starving, homeless creatures of the street. ' The bloke ' does not pray — but if he did, he would say, with Browning, ' God's in His heaven ; all's right with the world.' Exit ' the bloke.' P.S. No, not exit just then. Yesterday only, 1 was coming round the corner from Davies Street, and caught sight of 'the bloke ' dancing excitedly in mid-street, with his sheaf of papers, shouting the verdict of the Tonbridge murder. Next moment he had been knocked down by an omnibus and the wheel had gone over him. With many others I ran out into the roadway, and it so happened 1 was there first. 35 c 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS I picked l the bloke ' up and carried him to the pavement. His head bent inwards from my elbow to my chest, and two wet pennies fell into the crook of my arm from his mouth. His sheaf of papers had fallen from him and still lay in the road. Before we reached the pavement he looked up and saw me. 1 I'm damned dirty, sir,' he said ; l take care of your noo coat. That bloody bus Gawd — I'll talk to Jim — running over me like that.' There was an ambulance near at hand, and I delivered up ' the bloke.' Someone had picked up his papers from the roadway and put them by the side of the thin little body, and the pennies which he had dropped out of his mouth I put there too. Next day I went to the hospital where he had been taken. But ' the bloke ' will not stand at his corner any more. Sad ? Heaven help us all if we are going to be sad, because we are (quite assuredly) going to die ; the sooner we die and get it over, the better. Anticipating sadness is an absolute drug in the 36 FEBRUARY market, and is it not better to be glad because at the present moment we happen to be alive, and not sad because at some future moment we are going to die ? How long would the world go on if we all sat and sighed because we were going to die ? Yes, decidedly spring has come, and it amazes me to look back on what I wrote only a week ago, and find myself so blinded by that moment of languor which announced it, as not to have fore- seen what should so shortly follow. Yet if that obsession of languor had not been so complete, I suppose this effervescence of spring would not have run riot in me as it did, and it is with infinite misgivings that I attempt to put into words any of that bubbling thrill, that ecstasy in the sensation of mere living, which is felt, I believe, in every growing thing, down to the humblest blade of grass which is trodden underfoot, even as the varnish of springtime is on it — at that divinest of all moments in the year, when in man and brute and as yet leafless tree the sap once more stirs. This year it came upon me in spate ; that great 37 THE BOOK OF MONTHS flood of renewed vitality which follows round the earth from continent to continent as the spring returns suddenly lifted me off my feet, dictating what I did as imperatively as an electric current dictates the involuntary twitching of the muscles it passes through. And on this wise. I was out of town for two days last week, staying in Sussex at a house on the high down- land near Ashdown Forest. As I drove from the station, I was aware that some huge and subtle change was in the air, but put it down only to the contrast of country breezes with the density of London. The briskness of winter was alto- gether gone, but in its place was the smell of earth and growing things, very fragrant and curiously strong ; for rain, which brings out all scent into the air, be it good or bad, had fallen heavily that afternoon, drawing out, as I have said, the smell of growth, and leaving behind it, just as a water-cart does in streets, the smell of dust laid, or, rather, the smell which air has when there is no longer any dust in it. Also the vividness of colour surprised me ; and in the yet leafless trees there was a certain vigorous look, 38 FEBRUARY which I had missed all winter, a crispness of out- line, a look of tension as in an instantaneous photograph of a man about to leap. A thrush bubbled suddenly in a bush by the roadside, and, fool that I was, I did not know what was happening. I thought it was only a thrush singing. But had I known, it was spring. That night after dinner, instead of sitting down to bridge or some gray pursuit glorified by the title of game, eight sober and mature people did the silliest things. We played blindman's-buff ; we cock-fought on the hearth-rug ; we fell heavily to the ground in attempting to take out with our teeth pins placed in inaccessible positions on the legs of chairs : nobody cared what anybody else was doing ; everyone talked simultaneously and laughed causelessly. Eventually we dispersed to our rooms flushed and hot. My window had been shut, and a blind drawn down : here were the first things to be remedied ; up went the screaming blind, up went the window, and the huge, exultant night poured in. That was better, but still bad, and I tore off my clothes, leaving them on the floor, and as my mother 39 THE BOOK OF MONTHS bore me, and as I shall go back to the great mother of all, leaned out into the night, full of the excitement which at last I understood. It was night — night, the time when even a stock- broker (who had made ^290 on the Stock Exchange) reverts in some degree to the beast from which he has been evolved, when, unless one is fuddled with wine, or stupefied with food, or addled and rotten with sensual thought, one occasionally wins back to the old primeval prowling, excited joy of being alive, to the bliss which childhood knows in nightfall, robbed of its terrors. There it was, waiting for me, and I, as far as might be, ready for it, free from all desire, carnal, mental, or spiritual, but caught and burn- ing in the flame of mere life. Huge and soft the night beckoned ; humped gray shapes of bushes were blots on the lawn outside, above them rose the still gaunt shapes of trees, but hissing like a gas-jet with the pressure from within. Rain- clouds obscured the sky, the cold infinite stars were shut out, and only by the fact that it was not very dark did 1 know that the moon was somewhere risen, though invisible. That was as I 40 FEBRUARY would have it : for the time I was just a Live Thing, conscious of life. I wanted no distant stars to remind me how small I was, or how immense was heaven — for the time I desired only the kind warm earth — no moon to evoke, as she always does, the need of companionship. I was about on this earth, which, like I, was bursting with the promise of spring. Mating-time was not yet ; not yet was the time of fresh leaves, or any outward sign of vitality. The vitality was within, everything had drawn a long breath, and the long breath hung suspended for the moment. Soon in a shower of starlike blossoms, in a mist of green hung round the trees, in the complete song of birds, in achievement or effort on my part, the tension would break. It was the physical moment when completion is assured, and the pause comes, delicious because all, all has been leading up to this, and one is content, if it is possible to be content, because fruition is sure. Exquisite pangs have gone before, the pangs of anticipation. Exquisite pangs of completion will follow, but nothing can ever approach the com- pleteness of the assured moment. 4i THE BOOK OF MONTHS Night and its veiled darkness, a soft rain falling and hissing among the shrubs, the sleeping house — unless, indeed, there might be other watchers like myself unclothed beside an open window — utter loneliness, and the thrill of life. But it was not enough to stand there ; I had to mix with the night, I had to do my utmost to take it, the dripping shrubs, the falling rain, the whole grow- ing, quickening earth, nearer to me. It was not enough to look at it. So for convention's sake I pulled on trousers again, buttoned a coat over me, and, hatless and barefooted, opened my window further — a ground-floor window — and stepped out into the night. What I wanted I did not know : it was certain, at any rate, I did not want anybody else to be there ; yes, I know, I wanted only to be part of the growing sap-stirred world. No thought of either spiritual or carnal aspiration did I feel ; no gratitude to God, who made this ecstatic machine called me, entered into my mind, no thought of love or lust or desire. The gray curtain of cloud was the blanket under which, like a child, I buried my head ; I was too far gone, you will understand, to * talk FYench ' ; 42 FEBRUARY simply, I was possessed by the joy of life, that life which moved my muscles, making them tense and slack in turn as I walked, that held a long breath in my lungs and blew it out again, that made the soft rain drip from the clouds, that made the earth drink it in instinctively, that made the shrubs whisper to its falling and give out the odours of dampness and growth. Step by step, as I went over the lawn, with my feet already dripping and my hair growing matted with the benediction of the falling rain, this impulse grew and grew. Before I knew it, from walking I had passed to running, before I knew it my coat was lying somewhere on the grass, and the rain fell thick and cool on my back and shoulders. Dim shapes of shrubs fled by me ; then in front there sprang out of the dark the lines of a wooden fence bounding the lawn. This was taken in the stride almost, and the longer, coarser fibre of the meadow grass wrapped itself round my feet. Then a sandpan — a bunker guarding the eighteenth green of the golf-links — showed yellow in front, and next moment a flag waved to my right. Thereafter coarser grass again, and a 43 THE BOOK OF MONTHS hundred yards beyond, the streamlet, where I have delved patiently with a niblick. Beyond, another fence, and in the field — out of bounds — large dark shapes of cows lying down. One under- neath the shadow of a tree I stumbled against, leaving a snort and a stir behind, and I remember laughing at that. Then in due time a certain failure of wind, and a halt underneath a thin, young beech-tree with smooth, rounded stem. Next moment the trunk was between my knees, and between my arms strongly wound round it, my cheek against the bark, and, panting, I clung to it. It, too, was alive, and strong and hard, and with that, turning my head, I remember biting the bark, till strips of it came off and my lips bled. Then a bed of old brown bracken, and with my fingers I dug in the earth till I felt the buds of springing stems an inch below the ground. There I lay, a minute it may have been, or ten years, and the climax, I must suppose, was reached. There was no more possible to me, the riddle was unsolved, and for the moment I knew it to be insoluble : not because it was a silly riddle, but 44 FEBRUARY because it was no riddle at all, but the mystery of all mysteries — Life. As far as I personally could, I had done my best to answer it, not by thought, which is futile, but by being of the earth, by making myself one with growing things at the moment of spring-time, and this not, 1 do assure you, consciously, but because I had to. The current that ran through everything else ran through me also. I was a savage, an animal, what you will. The greatest moment was over ; again I was conscious of one slack arm hanging by my side, and one braced at the elbow to support my weight as I sat up. I knew that my feet were wet, that my hair had to be brushed from my eyes, that rain-drops fell from my eyebrows on to my face, that a torn, distracted, mud-covered blackness represented dress-trousers, that my coat was lying somewhere on the lawn, and that my bedroom window was an invitation to robbers. So I rose and walked back, slowly, and designedly slowly, in order to enjoy what I had not known. I had enjoyed before, but had simply taken. The cool rain was exquisite to the skin, so, too, the cool grass to the 45 THE BOOK OF MONTHS feet ; the night above and around was huge and solemn and ennobling. Thus the moral conscious- ness, I must suppose, awoke. I was rilled with edifying thoughts. They would be dull if re- corded ; they were dull even then, for the memory of the savage moments was still hot as a dream. Well, what then ? There is no ' what then.' That wild running through the dark is flesh and blood of me. Perhaps you have no taste for cannibalism. That is a very comfortable defect. The next twenty-four hours were, it is true, full of spring, but to me, licking the chops of my climax, they were jejune. My coat I picked up on the lawn ; I entered through my window — no robber could have come in that sacred hour — gazed on the wreck of dress-trousers, and went to bed, and to sleep instantly and dreamlessly, awaking to a great bold sunlight that streamed in through the windows when my valet drew up the blinds. With him I held a shamefaced colloquy, as he gathered my dress-clothes. ' I'm afraid they're rather muddy,' said I, stifling my face beneath the sheet. • Yessir.' 46 FEBRUARY 1 Do they happen to be torn ?' A short pause. ' Yessir — torn in five places.' ' Well, see what can be done. Have 1 any more?' ' No, sir. Cold or hot bath, sir ?' Bath ! That was a sitting in a tin pan and lifting teaspoonfuls of water on to one's spine ; acrobatic performances to get wet, towel, huddling on of clothes. ' Oh, cold ! Bring it in half an hour.' For half an hour I half dozed, half thought ot the performance of the night. I carefully con- sidered the question as to whether I had gone mad, and decided — rightly, 1 believe — that I had not, though other people would say so. Then after breakfast we went to play golr. Yes, I was right ; the anticipation, the unfulfilled certainty was over ; already small buds were red on the limes, and yellow on the elm. Spring had come, and we all talked about its delights. But none knew of mine. Eventually the eighteenth hole was reached, after a game that J should normally consider exciting, 47 THE BOOK OF MONTHS since my adversary and I were all square at the seventeenth. But this morning it struck me as colourless. Here, however, his second shot — full with the cleek — was short, and he went into the sandpan guarding the green, across which I had jumped in my outward journey, and walked through on my return. I stopped on the edge of the bunker, for I had warned him he could not be up, having myself played a full shot landing just over it. Upon which this accursed man took his niblick, and amid a shower of sand lay nearly dead. ' Curious,' says he. Meantime I had been examining the sand, and saw there the trace of a bare foot. 1 There's something much more curious than any shot of yours close by you,' said I. ' Look ; do you see the trace of a naked foot close by you on the sand?' He looked. 1 By God,' he said, ' let me putt first.' He missed it. So 1 had two for the hole and won. 43 MARCH 49 MARCH I wonder if any of those who perchance read this know of any formula, Christian, pagan, even Christian Scientist, which insures, or has any chance of insuring, decent habit of body or mind during an attack of lumbago. I have been trying my best in all three ; that is to say, as a Christian I have tried to be cheerful, to wear a helpful sort of smile, and have said to myself, ' Think of the early Christian martyrs, the boiling oil, and the lions, and those horrors.' But myself has said to me, ( That was for a good cause ; besides, they soon died.' Now, lumbago does not kill anybody, and, as far as I am aware, it is an invention of the devil. Thus Christianity failed to help me. Then I tried paganism. In other words, I swore. It did not do the slightest good. Then I tried Christian Science. I said : ' There is no such thing as pain — ow ! Moral mind 51 d 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS refuses to recognise the existence of mortal mind. There is nothing material ; all material is mortal mind, and there isn't any. Therefore I have no back, and consequently no small of it. It is all a false claim. Thus, as there isn't any, it is per- fectly ridiculous to think I have a shooting pain there, for there is no such thing as either (i.) the small of my back, (ii.) pain, either there or any- where else. I will therefore smile, and get up with a firm, brisk movement.' I did. Oh, Mrs. Eddy ! The false claim was more than usually clamant. In fact, for two days I have felt myself such a martyr that I am now, happily, beginning to feel that I cannot possibly be a martyr at all. Nobody can conceivably have suffered such agonies as I have been thinking I suffered and survived. All the same I was riding down Davies Street on my bicycle two mornings ago, in the very best of health and spirits. Where Grosvenor Street crosses it, a fool of a cabman (though I had rung my bell) drove slowly across my path, and I had to dismount. I exchanged a pleasantry or two with him of a 52 MARCH bitingly high-spirited nature, and essayed to get on again. At that moment, so it seemed, I was stabbed in the back, and I heard the cabman say, 1 Comin' over me like that, and drunk at this hour of the morning ' — continuing, you will have seen, our previous conversation. Bad, untrue, unkind as it was, it was the last word, and so is entitled to a certain respect. But next time I see No. 24,304 1 will see if I cannot give him lumbago. (This, evidently, is the pagan mood returning.) Since that moment the joy of life has vanished. It — I cannot write the word again, and I will only remark that it sounds like a second-rate Spanish watering-place — has known my down-sitting and mine uprising, and has smirched my days. 1 have eaten no meat, I have drunk no wine, I have been incapable of taking part in all social and pleasant affairs. I was told that exercise was good, and went to skate at Niagara, and retired after one stroke with a cold-dewed brow. I was told a Turkish bath was good, and caught a cold in the head on the top of it. I was told not to think about it — this was the Christian Science 53 THE BOOK OF MONTHS treatment, more or less — and the effect was that the Spanish watering-place thought the more of me. Only two hours ago, dressing for dinner — I dined alone in my horrid room — I dropped a sovereign on the floor, seriously considered whether it was worth picking up, and decided it was not. At that moment any tramp could have had it. Then by pure chance my servant came in, and I regained it. I was told to take Lithia Varalettes : the only effect, as far as I am aware, is that I am lowered for life. I even went so far as to see a doctor, who asked me whether I had done anything which might have produced a chill. Thank goodness, I had the face to say ' No.' In consequence he talked of the functions of certain internal organs ; into these regions I did not attempt to follow him. Now, all that I have written with regard to the second-rate Spanish watering-place is literally true. All the things which I am conscious of enjoying every day, such as reading, food, silly conversa- tion, proper wine, violent physical exertion, cold baths, grew pale or impossible. But looking back even from the middle of it all — for to-night 54 MARCH it is, if anything, a little more acute — I begin to see that nothing on the whole matters less than physical pain. Once before in my life, when 1 was eight years old, I had bad earache, so my family assure me. Of that I can remember nothing whatever, except that in consequence I went to stay near Dartmouth for change of air. But of Dartmouth I remember much. There was an aloe in the garden, and one of its great fibrous leaves projected across the path, and was cut off. This had to be done by a strong gardener with a saw. A leaf cut by a saw ! There were also rock pools in the estuary, with strawberry anemones — so we called them — waving in the water ; steamers passed, visible through a telescope, that would go straight on, self-contained, unhelped till they reached America. Ruta-muraria, a small mean fern (I cannot even remember hearing its name except then), grew in crevices in the garden wall; it was rare, and began and ended my collection of ferns. That is what remains to me of the earache. Once again I had a tooth out. That was half a crown. And now I have lumbago, and from analogy I 55 THE BOOK OF MONTHS see that a fortnight hence, and a week hence (I hope), and a year hence, I shall remember nothing of it, except that for a few days I stopped indoors mostly, wrote notes of regret, and read a variety of delightful books. ' Jekyll and Hyde ' I have read ; I have quaked with Hyde, and shuddered with Jekyll : I have been down the Sambre canalized ; I have been sucked under the fallen tree on the Oise ; I have understood why Mr. Crummies deluded himself into thinking the Phenomenon was a phenomenon ; I have admired the moral valour of Mrs. Nickleby when she con- vinced herself about the previous sanity of the gentleman in small-clothes and gray stockings ; I have killed the Red Dhole from the Deccan, and have sat (a remarkable feat) with Princess Napraxine in a temperature of over 1 30° Fahren- heit. But for the lumbago, 1 should probably have done none of these delightful things. Also I have learned (I shall have to learn it again and again) that the moment is always tolerable. Even this tiny pin-prick of a pain can teach one that. ' Circumscribe the moment,' as Marcus Aurelius said. You can get along all right for the 56 MARCH moment (unless you die, and then the trouble is solved) : why think of the moments to come ? When they come, deal with them. And I hope that if I ever suffer from carcinomato-cerebro- spinal sciatica, I may think of that. Besides — I must justify my conscience with respect to the doctor — I do not think it proved that my night adventure had anything to do with the lumbago. Thus, it would have been unfair to cast it, like bread on the waters, to a suspicious physician. And even if it had, it was well worth it. I would do it again to-morrow night, if the mood only could come again. I wonder how the writing and the subsequent publication of any book, the meanest, affects the average author? No doubt the great powers in authorship, so to speak, care as little when another volume is launched as does the Empire at large when another battleship leaves the slips to join its mighty brothers. But for the majority — those of us, in fact, who hope some day (however vain- glorious the hope, we all cling to it) to produce a book which may rouse laughter or tears or interest twenty years hence — I imagine that there is scarcely 57 THE BOOK OF MONTHS any excitement, depression, exaltation or mis- giving that we have ever felt which is com- parable to those attendant on the writing and launching of our little paper fleets. And as I have just launched another little paper boat to go and look after its drowned brothers, and the memory of all the emotions attendant on it is consequently keen, it may be of interest, in how- ever small a degree, to others to read what even so uneminent an author as myself experiences in these times. Birds, perhaps, give one the only simile possible for the first period. For the idea of the book, its scope, its aim, its plot, and, to a certain degree, its characters, all exist, in my case, before I put a word down on paper. When these are complete, we may say that the egg is there. The writing it, to my mind, is equivalent to the hatching only ; but the definite production of the egg — of that which contains potential vitality — is over and complete at the moment the writing begins. If there is no potential vitality in it then, there never will be. When I begin to write, 1 am sitting on my egg. 58 MARCH Now, this first period — here we dismiss the simile of the egg, and take that of disease — lasts for a very ill-defined period. During it the patient is continually conscious of an abnormality of condition. His spirits are very variable : sometimes for days together the appetite will be good (mine always is), and the only symptom of the malady is a slightly increased vividness. Speech is coherent, but rather more fluent than usual ; he tends to talk nonsense (this must not be confused with the subsequent wandering). Then, without apparent cause, stages of depres- sion, irritability, and general peevishness ensue: he will decry his favourite pursuits, particularly authorship, and express audibly a desire for a large and settled income in Consols. Shortly before the crisis approaches (/.*., the first dip of the pen in ink) a period of febrile excitement ensues ; he will put sudden problems to his nurses as to how A would act given B, C, and D did so-and-so, and, whatever the answers given him, he will certainly take exception to them. This is the period of wandering alluded to above. Both the period of excitement previous to this and the period of 59 THE BOOK OF MONTHS depression are marked by a certain listlessness with regard to other pursuits ; the patient takes nothing, except his malady, quite seriously, and though he performs the ordinary routine of life with correctness, he performs it somehow sub- aqueously. Indeed, he is never quite himself from the time the seeds of the malady first attack him. All these symptoms are temporarily ameliorated when, to go back to our first simile, the egg is laid. For a time the nurses are encouraged to hope that the worst is over. Large quantities of what is known as ' sermon-paper ' should be given without stint, and special care taken that there should be in every room, where the patient can possibly desire to sit, plenty of black ink and suitable pens. For a day or two he may refuse to go out altogether, or play any game, and here it is a mistake on the part of the nurses to urge him to do so. He may, in fact, be entirely left to himself. Probably these favourable symptoms will last for a week or two (during which the supply of sermon-paper should be renewed), and then a change for the worse comes over the 60 MARCH patient. The irritability returns, and with it an attack, more or less severe, of complete idleness and indescribable misgivings. He again expresses a wish for a settled income in Consols, and often goes suddenly to stay with his friends, or, if the disease is not so acute, merely lunches and dines out every day, and seems to fear being left alone. Then the malady becomes spasmodic, the periods of inaction alternate with periods of feverish industry, to which succeeds an attack of apparent coma with regard to everything except the disease itself, which is now confluent and completely encompasses him. A series of absolutely happy days ensue, accompanied by great mental activity and enormous consumption of sermon-paper. As soon as this definitely sets in, the nurses may make themselves quite happy for the time being. All fears of suicide may be considered over, and there is no allusion to Consols. And thus the tgg is hatched in a blaze of hypertrophied glory, It is hatched. That is to say, the MS. — such as it is — is complete, and personally one is completely happy for about a week. Then ensues a very tedious period, which is at times brightened 61 THE BOOK OF MONTHS by finding that something is better than one thought, but oftener darkened by finding that something is worse than one thought. In other words, after a week of idleness, I sit laboriously down, and copy out the whole thing from begin- ning to end. Other patients at this point, I believe, use a typewriter, but personally, on the one occasion when I did so, I found that the corrections were not compassable even in triple- spaced type. So now, when the first MS. is com- plete, I begin from the beginning, and write the whole story out again. Chapters are often excised, and chapters (more rarely) inserted, since in my first MS. I find that I much more commonly say too much than too little. (Here is an opening for critics to point out how extraordinarily super- fluous the first MS. must have been.) This period is the tiresome part of the hatching of the egg. The writing of the first MS., astounding though it may appear, was attended by a certain excite- ment : whereas the writing of the second is due to the desire, shall we call it? to catch one's self tripping, to detect, by the painful process of copying, one, perhaps, of the hundred absurdities 62 MARCH that one has committed. Yet there is a certain delight even in this, for since one would not set pen to paper at all unless one thought that one had an idea of some kind, it is mildly pleasant even now, when the first excitement is over, to see in cool blood what the idea was, to emphasize what appear to be its decent points, to suppress its bad ones. After that the second MS. goes to the typewriter, and peace again reigns. Now, during the first writing of the MS. a curious thing has more than once happened to me ; that is to say, a character, or a situation, or even the story itself, takes the bit between its teeth, and, as far as I know, bolts. One had meant to do and to say something different, but whether it is that even in the meanest-imagined character one, so to speak, raises the devil, and cannot be held responsible for his subsequent action, or whatever the cause, this phenomenon occurs. In the terms of our first simile, this is the cuckoo's egg in the hedge-sparrow's nest. One sits on the thing — writes it, that is — but it is not going to be a hedge-sparrow at all, but something quite different. This has happened to me more than once, in 63 THE BOOK OF MONTHS and (my egotism does not go quite so far as to write the names of these obscure tales), I had de- finitely meant to give a different outcome. I had meant a character to be different in character, and thus to play another part. But writing I found it was not so. That character would go another way. And did. I followed faint but pursuing. To resume. The MS. comes back from the typewriter's, and the sickening part of the work begins. In print, somehow, the degrading stuff looks even more degraded ; for print, as Hazlitt said, in more senses than one, had he known it, ' print settles it.' What one suspected was rather sketchy and amateur becomes indubitably so. What one thought was somewhat workmanlike appears merely slip-shod carpentering, unplaned, out of line, with screws and nails not driven home. One taps here, one whacks there ; one planes down, and finds one has planed too much ; one planes down, and finds one has to plane more. One thinks — and this is, perhaps, the worst of all — that A rather resembles one's dear friend, John Smith, and ruthlessly takes all the stuff out of him, leaving an enfeebled marionette. Then, like a 64 MARCH pin-prick to a man on fire, come the inevitable typewriter's errors, necessitating reference to the MS. Some typewriters omit whole sentences, because they are not certain (no wonder) ; others rush in where angels fear to tread, with bril- liant repartees of a sort undreamed of; others spell a name wrong throughout ; others — and they are worse — spell it wrong occasionally. When I have time I will write an article on typewriters. They will not, after that, hold their heads so high. Then comes the last step. When the typoscript (an awful word) has been corrected, and if neces- sary another made, and also corrected, the whole thing goes to the publisher, and in course of time come proofs. Proofs are of two kinds — galley proofs and page proofs. Galley proofs are inter- minable strips of paper which slide off one's desk, get mixed, and are altogether impossible. Page proofs, though depressing, are manageable, because they come in folded sheets of sixteen pages. Then once again are all weak points glaringly em- phasized, the indescribable misgivings return with redoubled vigour, and invariably 1 long to live the last year, or whatever it may be, over again, in 65 k THE BOOK OF MONTHS order to have profited by my previous experience and do better. Usually at this stage — perhaps because I am used to it — the c idea ' does not seem to me so bad. It is only everything else that is wrong. Yet even then come sanguine moments. Quite suddenly I find myself thinking it is extremely good. How delicate, for instance, is the way in which Y behaves, how subtle and correct is Z's induction. Back swings the pen- dulum : over go these unstable ninepins. There is probably a revise — there may be two — and the bread is cast upon the waters. As the date for publication approaches I feel ill. If I could, I would recall it all. One has felt a certain situation, or a certain character, keenly ; was it not enough to have felt it, without throwing it, like early Christians, to the public ? They will tear it into shreds, and probably refuse to swallow it. But just then — when, in my experience, the darkest hour is on one, when one distrusts utterly all one has done, when one is afraid that that which is to one's self a chiefest joy of life is to everyone else just a mud-pie made by a child in a populous roadway, to be carefully stepped over 66 MARCH by three-quarters of the passers-by, to be stepped into by the remaining quarter, who, with a care- less cuff to the maker of it, will pass on, re- membering it only as they would remember some tiny untowardness in the menu at dinner — then comes quite suddenly the remembrance of an exceeding unexpected joy. A man or a woman, otherwise quite unknown to one, has on the last occasion of this kind thought it worth while to send a line, it may be a postcard only, to say 4 thank you.' Once this * thank you' arrived to me from New Zealand, and was accompanied by two frozen sheep bred on the reader's farm. The letter said, ' Please do not answer this, or you will think I am wanting an autograph.' Or, again, it may be just a press-cutting from a provincial paper, that shows me that someone whom I have never seen, and probably will never see, has understood something of what made me so happy when I thought of it. And that — unreasonably, perhaps — more than counterbalances the vitupera- tion or the scorn of those who either do not or will not see. For a friend concerns me very much : an enemy, or, if that is too big a word, 67 e 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS an acquaintance to whom I am antipathetic, con- cerns me not at all. He is a negative quantity, and in this life of ours the negative quantities do not matter, for the man who has one friend is infinitely better off than the man who has no enemies and a million acquaintances. Acquaintances ! They are the bane and the absurdity of life, and especially of ordinary London life. How often has one heard it said, and, indeed, said one's [self, ' Such a bore ! I've got to go and call on So-and-so.' For if one finds it a burden to go and talk to anybody, for social reasons, it shows a very unbecoming conceit if one imagines that one's hostess will fail to find it a bore too. The custom, for instance, of call- ing after one has dined at a house is a very sensible and pleasant one, but it presumes that you have been dining with a friend. In this case the call will not bore you. But if the call bores you, it is probable that the dinner bored you too, in which case, unless you dined there for the sake of being fed gratis, why did you dine there at all ? Again, a step further, how often have you exclaimed, * What a bore ! I've got to dine 68 MARCH with to-night.' And if you say that, you have no business to eat 's cutlet. Of course, there is another side to the question — for questions with only one side to them have ceased to be questions at all — and that is, that at any such house you may meet a friend, or you may meet someone who will eventually become a friend. Then, I grant, it were worth while trudging there a hundred miles on foot, for from pole to pole, if you search the earth, you will find nothing better than a friend. How many have you? I have nine, and consider myself most fortunate. Or, again, you may find the very fact of meeting a certain number of people, though they are the barest acquaintances, stimulating, just as there are certain plants which thrive better with others of their species than alone. That, again, is a good reason : only when social etiquette demands a call of you, do not say, c What a bore !' You have received a benefit : pay the current coin for it and don't grumble. Now, this herding together of human beings with wealth and leisure into London for several months every year — there to meet their friends, 69 THE BOOK OF MONTHS of course, but also a whole host of people who will never, and can never, be more than acquaint- ances — is a very curious modern phenomenon. London — in this sense of the word — was born not so many decades ago, and since then has grown, and is growing, in a manner perfectly .amazing. There was a time, say eighty years ago, when London in this sense practically did not exist ; the ' season ' was enjoyed by those who now go to London in a dozen country towns, to which the rank and fashion of the country flocked, and there made gay on their native pavements. And, by all accounts, they did make gay. Then, by degrees, this remarkable monster of London began growing. People of leisure — or so I take it — began to weary of that priceless benefit, and in a couple of generations have turned themselves into perfect galley-slaves in the barque which they term, some of them mistakenly, ' Pleasure.' Means of travel got easier, quicker, and cheaper ; more families every year, who had no business, either political or of money-making, took to going to London, where they found twenty theatres instead of one, a million people to move among instead of a 70 MARCH thousand. Intimacies, it is true, were less common there than in the friendly and less populous streets of their county town, but, instead, they might in the streets or at the houses of their acquaintances behold, in propria persona, the man or woman with whose name at the moment the world was ringing ; or a new play claimed their attention and provided an easy subject of con- versation — for conversation, unless they were people of brains, and many excellent folk are not, began, perhaps, to wear a little thin in the sixth week of their season at York or Winchester. But it would be impossible to be in London in the autumn or winter, during the months of shooting and hunting, and so, by common consent, the London season — a unique fact — was fixed for the months May, June, and July — a time when air in town is scarce, and suns are sultry, but a time in the country when Nature holds high festival, and all who have eyes to see and ears to hear are equally honoured at her banquet. But — and this could only happen in the Anglo-Saxon race, and it is symptomatic of the strength, and possibly, in years to come, of its weakness — Sport 7* THE BOOK OF MONTHS said the final word. Half-fledged pheasants are not shootable, and foxes, that strange breed, which would have been exterminated long ago were it not for the ordinance that they shall be killed in one way only, were busy with the propagation of their species. And thus, though Nature spreads her feast, but sits alone at her empty board, she still has the last compelling word on the subject. In fact, during the last half-dozen decades a new feverish and nervous disease has spread over England in a terrifying manner. We may call it Turbamania, or the passion for crowds, and, like the influenza, it attacks the upper classes more, it would appear, than the lower. No cure for it has yet been found, and it has not received, as a specific disease, the attention it deserves. This is curious : for in this inquisitive age, though it was a disease that only manifested itself in, let us say, slight redness of the little finger, and was perfectly harmless, we should probably by this time be possessed of a hospital for treatment of the cases, and dozens of savants squinting them- selves purblind in the hope of discovering its bacillus. Many daily, and especially weekly, 72 MARCH papers have columns devoted to its symptoms, though they apparently do not know that they are speaking of it. But whenever I see that the Marquis of entertained the following dis- tinguished company to dinner, I recognise Turba- mania. For whom (except the sufferers from this distressing malady) can such an announcement concern ? Not the diners, surely, for they were aware of it before. Nor, as far as I can see, those who were not asked, for the simple reason that they were not asked. Or who (except Turba- maniacs) care to hear how Lady was dressed? She herself, those who saw her, or those who did not see her? For the life of me 1 cannot tell. Yet how great must be the demand for such informa- tion, if we consider in what enormous quantities it is supplied ! It must be read and looked for by thousands who do not know Lady by sight. Her mother, her sister, her daughter perhaps, if in India, might have gentle emotions raised by the knowledge of how she was dressed. But who else ? The theme is not worth consideration, except from my own standpoint, my own private view of 73 THE BOOK OF MONTHS it, which at this moment occupies me enormously. Six months ago I decided to leave London, that most jealous of all mistresses, who exacts from us not merely our conscious thoughts, but pervades us in a way that no Cleopatra ever did yet. To anyone who has not known London the idea is unintelligible ; to anyone who has, all explanations fall short of what he knows. Think of it ! Five million people, awake or asleep, round one — five million, each of whom is as important to himself as I to me, stealing about like thoughts in the brain of this busy city, intent, alert, as are no other five million people in the world. My God ! how I love the sense of it ! how each street is to me a room, a passage, in a great house to which I have but lately succeeded, and is crammed with treasures, some few of which I know by sight, but of which as yet I do not know the thousandth part. What are they ? Men and women, that is all ; and is that not enough ? What is it ? What is it, 1 vainly ask myself, that stirs me so ? Me, who know unconsciously the drone of the four-wheeler as it passes up this 74 MARCH huge beating artery of life, and, without dis- traction of thought, can distinguish it from the quick cloop-cloop of the hansom, and can recog- nise the boom of the omnibus, and divine the mean- ing of a hundred noises in the street without raising my eyes or losing the thread of what I am doing. Life, jostling, vulgar, crowded, commonplace (God forgive me !) life. Oh, how excellent ! I do not look at the placards of the latest news ; I look at the seedy man who carries them about like a plaster on his usually weak chest. How can I convey it all ? The wet asphalt of the roadway, the streaked mud of the roadway, the smell of the Twopenny Tube, the reek from the restaurant next door, the reprints of Cosway in the shop-window adjoining, my own door with a circling lock, which is always upside down to my key. What does it all mean to the person who does not know what it means? and what can that which I say mean to the person who does know? Yet, drunk as I am with crowds (here indeed is Turbamania), I propose to-morrow to go forth to a house in a sleepy county town, where no 75 THE BOOK OF MONTHS one is ever in a hurry, though many have the impression that they are, and there are oiled wheels of existence continually gently turning, which, as far as I know at present, find no par- ticular grist, instead of these grating, roaring, spinning fly-wheels of the world. There is a hotel bus there, and no hansoms ; no vomiting of crowds from embowelled stations, no — no any- thing, as it seems to me this moment, except — and this is in the main the reason for which I go — there is as much time there as in London (all the time there is, in fact), and less to do in it. I want, in fact, to arrive at a greater simplicity of life than seems to me possible in London, to get into what I believe to be more normal and healthy conditions, instead of living an existence which, however delightful and absorbing, is yet slightly feverish. I want to get out of the habit of think- ing of the next delightful thing I am going to do in the course of the one which I am doing, and so largely missing its point — not to be in a hurry, not to clutch so much at pleasures. Also, in spite of my passion for crowds, I have desired all this last year, with a haunting intensity 76 MARCH which I cannot hope to convey, to watch the bursting of the spring, to see it mix into the great triumph of the summer, to follow step by- step the fruition of the sun, and, to round the perfect circle, see the accomplished and completed year fall to sleep again in the arms of winter — the year which, since the beginning of time, has been waiting- among the crowds of the uncounted centuries for its turn to give to the sons of men sweet and bitter, ecstasy, and life and death, as God has ordained. 77 APRIL 79 APRIL I have been here nearly a month without spending a single night away — that in itself is a sign of improvement, for I suppose (to my shame I own it) that it must be years since I have slept thirty consecutive nights in the same bed. And what I believe is a greater sign of improvement is that I have not wanted to go away, and I do not want to go away. I like these level, uneventful days: these mornings of work, followed by a few hours of out-of-doors, and in the evening * the face of a friend,' in this house or another. How dull I should have thought it, not long ago ; how antipodal to dull I find it ! I said 'uneventful' just now — that was a mistake. I have been through fiery trials, in the shape of a cook, who could not only not cook decently, but could not cook at all. In any case, she didn't, and I have eaten raw flesh on the altar of rusticity. Si f THE BOOK OF MONTHS Then there was a personage who represented herself as a charwoman. Though I cannot say she was a housebreaker, she was certainly nearer that than anything else ; for though she did not actually break the house, she broke everything inside it. She began ' cleaning,' as she called it, before it was yet day, and till nightfall the house was resonant with fracture. When there was nothing left to break, she upset her washpail over anything that came handy, brocade for choice. She upset, also, permanganate of potash, with which 1 was staining a floor, over a green carpet, and one evening 1 found her eating asparagus (my asparagus, too !) in the scullery. Thereupon I said ' Board-wages,' and it is my belief that she simply added board-wages to her ordinary diet, which she ate at my expense. Otherwise, there is no possible way of accounting for the fact that a sirloin of beef, which had come in in the morning Enough ! She is gone. Stevenson recommends weeding and cacao-seed planting as a suitable pursuit for anyone who thinks he can muke his Jiving out of writing ' measly yarns.' But now I have one advantage over that divine author : I know a far better 82 APRIL employment. It is to paint floors with perman- ganate of potash (otherwise known as Condy's fluid ; but you can get much more of it for your money, though it is cheap anyhow, if you buy it in the raw). For a shilling you get enough to stain all the floors in your house (unless you live in an exceptionally large one) the most beautiful brown. The very process reminds one of the scene of the powder-mixing in 'Jekyll and Hyde.' It is laid on dark purple ; before your eyes it changes to a livid angry green, and while yet it is wet it becomes a dark brown. You lay it on with a large paste- brush, and feel you are saving money. Incidentally you get a quantity on to your hands, and it is apparently indelible. Then you rub it with beeswax, and your deal floor becomes positively ancestral. A few Persian rugs on the top bring you back from a villa to the gorgeous East. But even before I stained the floors I bought seeds, and planted sweet-peas and nasturtiums broadcast, also (these in seedlings) Jackmanni,* and tropa> olum and tobacco-plant, and two Crimson Ramblers. Then, on a day to be marked with red in the annals * Purple clematis. 83 F 2 THE BOOK OF MONTHS of scarification, I took a trowel and a pocket-knife, and went into the highways and hedges to cut standards for rose-trees. But I took no gloves. Hinc UU lacrima. Anyhow, I cut seven standards. This is the way not to do it. I started cheerfully along an unfrequented lane. Larks hovered trilling : spring was bursting in numberless buds, and the green mist of leaves hung round the hedgerows. Before long I saw in the hedge by which I went a suitable standard. It was rather inaccessible, but the lust of the gardener burned in me, and I took a sort of header into the hedge. A shoot from the coveted standard playfully retained my cap, another took one arm in keeping, a third gently fixed itself to my left hand. That had to be very carefully disengaged, since the thorns were encompassing it, and in disengaging it 1 dropped the trowel. An incautious recovery of the trowel drew the first blood. Then I began. It is necessary in cutting a standard to get a piece of real root. This particular standard, how- ever, seemed to have no particular roots. It went on and on below ground without object, so far as 1 could judge ; infirm of purpose, it could not 84 APRIL begin. When it did begin, it was already mixed up with a bramble, the thorns of which were set on the parent stem on a perfectly different principle, and I did not want the bramble. But, with a totally undeserved popularity on my part, the bramble wanted me. It got me — in pieces which I hope were no use to it ; and I began to see that, under certain circumstances and to a certain extent, as Mr. Gladstone might have said, gloves were, if not necessary to human life, at any rate a protec- tive agent against possibly fatal haemorrhage. Just then the root began. I destroyed the bramble, root and branch ; I destroyed a hazel (branch), and I destroyed the standard (root). That was all at present. Clearly this would not do : I was as far from standards as ever, but I was bleeding like a pig. So I went home, got some gloves, and became successful. But to be successful in a tale of ad- venture is to become dull, and with a view to avoiding this as much as is possible, short of not writing at all, I will merely say that I cut seven standards on that divine afternoon, and — but that I can't sing — went home singing. S5 THE BOOK OF MONTHS The cat next door, so it appeared, had observed the planting of the Jackmanni with a disapproving eye, and even as I went into the garden with my seven standards (like a Roman Emperor) I saw a stealthy form moving slowly away from the corner where I had put one of them. Now, I know something about cats, though nothing, it appears, about standards, and, without the least hurry, I walked into the garden and said c Poor puss,' and saw, out of the corner of my eye (I dared not look honestly round for fear ( Poor puss ' should see), that my Jackmanni was entirely disinterred, and a scurry of freshly-dug earth lay round it. There were therefore two courses open to me : either the direct, which lay in taking the cat, which (with the shallow diplomacy of its species) had advanced towards me, straight to the dis- interred Jackmanni and there slapping it, or the subtle course. I chose the subtle. The cat was a knave — I knew that perfectly well — I chose to be the knave set to catch it. So I said ' Poor puss' again, and went to the uprooted Jackmanni and planted it again in the sight of ' Poor puss.' Then 1 went slowly indoors, a very Bismarck. 86 APRIL Once arrived inside, I flew to the lumber-room, and with feverish hands unearthed a large garden squirt, and, filling it with cold water (I wish it had been iced), flew to what we may call the wing of the house — it consists merely of a bootroom, which commands, strategically speaking, the Jackmanni. The window was open, and with great caution I advanced to it and looked out. Already, once more that very stupid knave of a cat was busy in the bed. I took careful aim, and the cold water drenched the knave. I will teach it — at least, I think I have taught it — that I do not plant Jackmanni merely to give it a few moments' senseless amusement. Besides, to- morrow I shall have a fox-terrier ; so the garden squirt was the kindest sort of cruelty. I am afraid that, in talking thus vaguely of ' the house ' and ' the garden,' the reader may have formed a totally erroneous impression of scale, and I must inform him at once that c the house ' is the kind of house which is called The Cedars, because, apparently, it has one withered furze- bush in the garden. It is semi-detached, stands on the outskirts of the town, and is of an external 37 THE BOOK OF MONTHS appearance which is better forgotten. Inside, however, the rooms are good, high and airy, and, anyhow, it suits me. There is a small strip of garden in front, in which at present I take no interest, and a square of garden behind measuring some sixty or seventy feet by thirty, encompassed by a wall of old and very large brick. A strip of border, sown from end to end with sweet-peas, runs up one side. At the far end is a small raised terrace of grass, on which grow an apple-tree and a plum-tree, by which I have planted the Crimson Ramblers. The seven standards, to be budded in June, stand in a formal row below the terrace, and parallel to the border of sweet- peas stand half a dozen tubs, in which are sown nasturtiums of the large climbing kind. This leaves a space of grass, twenty feet by forty, and on this is being now erected ' the shelter,' a wooden room with trellis on two sides, match- boarding on one, and entirely open on the other. Felt will be laid down over the grass, and over the felt rugs. There will be a couple of basket-chairs there, an old French mattress covered with rugs, a writing-table, and a small dining-table, with four 88 APRIL chairs. There I propose to live as soon as the summer comes. Over one side the nasturtiums in the tubs will trail their green and ruddy arms, and I shall look towards the seven standards and the Scarlet Ramblers. In the evening an Arab lamp with electric light, brought on a long cord from the house, will illuminate it. The very planning of c the shelter ' was an ab- sorbing joy ; absorbing, too, is it to see it rise, smelling clean of freshly-chiselled wood. Then it will be painted green, and ready for habitation. In front of it, towards the terrace, will stand a sundial, which will not get, as far as I can see, any sun at all, since the stately shelter will entirely shade it. However, I dare say it will do better in the shade, like lilies of the valley. Besides, one never uses a sundial in order to tell the time. I often wonder how large an area of house and garden it is possible to get really fond of. The fact of broad acres and limitless corridors may be, and often is, delightful to the possessor, especially if they are of long-standing possession ; but to be fond of a place in the way that I mean implies 89 THE BOOK OF MONTHS to be intimate with every square inch of it. Your own niche, your own particular angulus terre congratulated upon having achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.' The Scotsman. — ' It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo- Indian life. Mr^. Su-el writes forcibly nnd sympathetically, and much of the charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings <>ut the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potters Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling 01 the tragedy and comedy of life Its evil woman />ar excellence . . . is a finished study.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. RED ROWANS By FLORA ANNIE STEEL In One Volume, priee 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — 'Judge it by what canons of criticism you will the book is a work of art. . . . The story is simple enough, but it is as lifelike as anything in modern fiction. The people speak and act as people do act and speak. There is not a false note throughout. Mrs. Steel draws children as none but a master-hand ran draw.' The Westminster Gazette. — 'Far and away above the average of novels, and one of those books which no reader should miss.' The Daily News. — 'The book is written with distinction. It is moving, picturesque, the character drawing is sensitive and strong.' Black and White. — 'It reveals keen sympathy with nature and clever portraiture, and it possesses many passages both humorous and pathetic' THE FLOWER OF FORGIVENESS By FLORA ANNIE STEEL In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — 'Nothing here ought to be neglected, for there is in most places something profitable for not too obtrusive exhortation, and almost everywhere something for enjoyment.' The Glasgow Herald. — 'A clever book which should tend to widen Mrs. Steel's circle among the reading public' The Scotsman. — 'They have a rich imaginative colour always.' The Manchester Guardian. — 'Much sympathy with humanity however dark the skin, and a delicate touch in narrative, raise Mrs. F. A. Steel's Indian Stories into a high rank. There is a pathos in them not common among Anglo-Indian story-tellers.' MISS STUART'S LEGACY By FLORA ANNIE STEEL In One Volume, price 6s. The Saturday Review. — 'It throbs with the vigour of real creative power.' The Spectator. — 'It is remarkably clever ; it is written in a style which has ease, dignity, grace, and quick responsiveness to the demands of the theme; it has passages of arresting power and fine reticent pathos; and it displays :i quick eye for character and a power of depicting it with both force and subtlety. ' The Westminster Gazette. — ' A most faithful, vivid impression of Indian life.' The Daily Telegraph. — ' A singularly powerful and fascinating story.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. A 2 BOWERY TALES (George's Mother, and Maggie.) By STEPHEN CRANE In One Volume, price 6s. The Morning Post. — ' Mr. Crane never wrote anything more vivid than the story in which Maggie takes the heroine's part. It is as admirable in its own field as The Red Badge of Courage in another.' The Illustrated London News.— 'Stephen Crane knew the Bowery very well, and in these two stories its characteristics come out with the realism of Mr. Arthur Morrison's studies of the East End. Both are grim and powerful sketches.' PICTURES OF WAR (The Red Badge of Courage, and The Little Regiment.) By STEPHEN CRANE In One Volume, price 6s. Truth. — 'The pictures themselves are certainly wonderful. ... So fine a book as Mr. Stephen Crane's Pictures of War is not to be judged pedantically.' The Daily Graphic. — '. . . A second reading leaves one with no whit diminished opinion of their extraordinary power. Stories they are not really, but as vivid war pictures they have scarcely been equalled. . . . One cannot recall any book which conveys to the outsider more clearly what war means to the fighters than this collection of brilliant pictures.' THE OPEN BOAT By STEPHEN CRANE In One Volume, price 6s. The Saturday Review.— '. . . Themost artistic thing Mr. Crane has yet accomplished.' The St. James's Gazette.—' Each tale is the concise, clear, vivid record of one sensational impression. Facts, epithets, or colours are given to the reader with a rigorousness of selection, an artfulness of restraint, that achieves an absolute clearness in the resulting imaginative vision. Mr. Crane has a personal touch of artistry that is refreshing.' ACTIVE SERVICE By STEPHEN CRANE In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'The characters are admirably sketched and sustained. There is tenderness ; there is brilliancy ; there is real insight into the minds and ways of women and of men.' The Spectator — ' Mr. Crane's plot is ingenious and entertaining, and the characterisation full of those unexpected strokes in which he excel >.' The Academy. — 'The book is full of those feats of description for which the author is famous. Mr. Crane can handle the epithet with surprising, almost miraculous dexterity. Active Serz'ice quite deserves to be called a remarkable book.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE THIRD VIOLET By STEPHEN CRANE In One I 'olume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'We have never come across a book that brought certain sections of American society so perfectly before the reader as does The Third Violet, which introduces us to a fanning family, to the boarders at a summer hotel, and to the young artists of New York. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and iis truth appeals to the English reader, so that the effect of the book is to draw him nearer to his American cousins. The Third Violet incidentally contains the best dog we have come across in modern fiction. Mr. Crane's dialogue is excellent, and it is dialogue of a type for which neither The Red Badge of Courage nor his later books had prepared us.' AFRICAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT By A. J. DAWSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'I lis stories have the special attraction of stories of a country by a man who has knowledge of it and is under its fascina- tion ; and are good stories into the bargain. lie has a pretty humour, and the gift of telling a story veil, and special knowledge to work upon ; the result is an entertaining book.' The Scotsman. — 'The stories are all invented and written with that glow of imagination which seems to come of Eastern sunshine. . . . They are besides novel and readable in no ordinary degree, and they make a book which will not fail to interest every one who takes it up.' THE STORY OF RONALD KESTREL By A. J. DAWSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'The sketches of life and scenery in Morocco and in New South Wales are attractive, the literary composition keeps a good level throughout. Mr. Dawson is a writer of ability who has seen men and things, and should go far.' JOSEPH KHASSAN: HALF-CASTE By A. J. DAWSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'Since Mr. Kipling's famous ballad, which emphasised the underlying unity of martial spirit common to East and West, we have read no more striking or suggestive study of Oriental and Occidental modes of thought than this work, which deals with their fundamental differences. The story is laid at first and last in Morocco, which the author knows better than most Englishmen. Mr. Dawson's style is vivid and not without distinc- tion. His work is virile as well as good reading : he can command ' humour and pathos. 1 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'It is strong, undeniably strong ; a well-written book with many admirable character-studies. The book is undoubtedly a powerful one.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE LION AND THE UNICORN By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Eight short stories, each of them written with a brilliance worthy of the author of So/diers of Fortune, and each a perfect piece of workmanship. Every one of them has a striking and original idea, clothed in the words and picturesque details of a man who knows the world. They are genuine literature. Each is intensely fresh and distinct, ingenious in conception, and with a meaning compounded of genuine stuff. There is something in all of the stories, as well as immense cleverness in bringing it out.' The Daily Telegraph. — ' Stories of real excellence, distinctive and interesting from every point of view.' SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS In One Volume, price 6s. Illustrated. The Athenaeum. — ' The adventures and exciting incidents in the book are admirable ; the whole story of the revolution is most brilliantly told. This is really a great tale of adventure.' The Daily Chronicle. — ' We turn the pages quickly, carried on by a swiftly moving story, and many a brilliant passage : and when we put the book down, our impression is that few works of this season are to be named with it for the many qualities which make a successful novel. We congratu- late Mr. Harding Davis upon a very clever piece of work.' THE NIGGER OF THE ' NARCISSUS' By JOSEPH CONRAD In One Volume, price 6s. A. T. Quiller-Couch in Pall Mall Magazine.— ' Mr. Conrad's is a thoroughly good tale. He has something of Mr. Crane's insistence; he grips a situation, an incident, much as Mr. Browning's Italian wished to grasp Metternich ; he squeezes emotion and colour out of it to the last drop ; he is ferociously vivid ; he knows the life he is writing about, and he knows his seamen too. And, by consequence, the crew of the Narcissus are the most plausibly life-like set of rascals that ever sailed through the pages of fiction.' THE INHERITORS By JOSEPH CONRAD and F. M. HUEFFER In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenjeum.- — ' This is a remarkable piece of work, possessing quali- fications which before now have made a work of fiction the sensation of its year. Its craftsmanship is such as one has learnt to expect in a hook bearing Mr. Conrad's name. . . . Amazing intricacy, exquisite keenness of style, and a large, fantastic daring in scheme. An extravaganza The Inheritors may certainly be called, but more ability and artistry has gone to the making of it than may be found in four-fifths of the serious fiction of the year.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD Street, W.C. JACK RAYMOND By E. L. VOYNICH In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'This is a remarkable book. Mrs. Voynich has essayed no less than to analyse a boy's character as warped even to the edge of permanent injury by the systematic sternness — aggravated on occasion into fiendish brutality — of his guardian. We know notning in recent fiction comparable with the grim scene in which the boy forces his uncle to listen to the maledictions of the Commination Service directed against himself. Jack Raymond is the strongest novel that the present season has produced, and it will add to the reputation its author won by The Gadfly.' THE GADFLY By E. L. VOYNICH In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — 'A remarkable story, which readers who prefer flesh and blood and human emotions to sawdust and adventure should consider as some- thing of a godsend. It is more deeply interesting and rich in promise than ninety-nine out of every hundred novels.' The World. — 'The strength and originality of the story are indisputable.' The St. James's Gazette. — 'A very strikingly original romance which will hold the attention of all who read it, and establish the author's reputation at once for first-rate dramatic ability and power of expression.' VOYSEY By R. O. PROWSE In One Volume, price 6s. The Standard. — 'The analytical power displayed makes this book a remarkable one, and the drawing of the chief figures is almost startlingly good. ' The Daily News. — 'A novel of conspicuous ability. ' FROM A SWEDISH HOMESTEAD By SELMA LAGERLOF In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'The very strangeness of her genius is one of its chief charms. Her domain lies on the outskirts of fairyland, and there is another- worldliness about her most real and convincing characters.' The Spectator. ' We are glad to welcome in this delightful volume evidence of the unabated vitality of that vein of fantastic invention which ran purest in the talcs of Andersen. The influence of Cathe's Wilhelm Meister is obvious in the longest and most beautiful story of the collection. But when all deductions are made on the score of indebtedness, the originality of plot and treatment remain unquestioned. The Story is rendered touching and convincing by the ingenious charm and sincerity of the narrator.' London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE MANTLE OF ELIJAH By I. ZANGWILL In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'Contains cleverness of a very varied kind — traits of fine imagination, of high spiritual feeling, keen observation, and a singular sense of discrimination in character and dialogue.' The Outlook. — 'His story and the figures which people its pages are of a vivid and absorbing interest, instinct with life, and on every page some witty and memorable phrase, or trenchant thought, or vivid picture.' THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS By I. ZANGWILL In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — 'No reader, who is not blinded by prejudice, will rise from the perusal of this engrossing volume without an enhanced sense of compassion for, and admiration of, the singular race of whose traits Mr. Zangwill is, perhaps, the most gifted interpreter.' The Standard. — ' These stories are of singular merit. They are, mostly, of a tragic order ; but this does not by any means keep out a subtle humour ; they possess also a tenderness . . . and a power that is kept in great restraint and is all the more telling in consequence.' DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO By I. ZANGWILL In One Volume, price 6s. W. E. Henley in ' The Outlook.' — 'A brave, eloquent, absorbing, and, on the whole, persuasive book. ... I find them all vastly agreeable reading, and I take pleasure in recognising them all for the work of a man who loves his race, and for his race's sake would like to make literature. . . . Here, I take it — here, so it seems to me — is that rarest of rare things, a book.' The Daily Chronicle. — ' It is hard to describe this book, for we can think of no exact parallel to it. In form, perhaps, it comes nearest to some of Walter Pater's work. For each of the fifteen chapters contains a criticism of thought under the similitude of an "Imaginary Portrait." . . . We have a vision of the years presented to us in typical souls.' THE MASTER By I. ZANGWILL With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author In One Volume, price 6s. The Queen. — 'It is impossible to deny the greatness of a book like The Master, a veritable human document, in which the characters do exactly as they would in life. ... I venture to say that Matt himself is one of the most striking and original characters in our fiction, and I have not the least doubt that Tlie Master will always be reckoned one of our classics.' The Literary World. — ' In The. Master, Mr. Zangwill has eclipsed all his previous work. This strong and striking story is genuinely powerful in its tragedy, and picturesque in its completeness. . . . The work strikes a truly tragic chord, which leaves a deep impression upon the mind.' London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO By I. ZANGWILL In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remark- able book.' The Guardian. — 'A novel such as only our own day could produce. A masterly study of a complicated psychological problem in which every factor is handled with such astonishing dexterity and intelligence that again and again we are tempted to think a really great book has come into our hands.' Black and White. — 'A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A book to read, to keep, to ponder over, to remember.' The Manchester Guardian. — 'The best Jewish novel ever written.' THE KING OF SCHNORRERS By I. ZANGWILL With over Ninety Illustrations by Phil May and Others. In One Volume, price 6s. The Saturday Review. — 'Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in fiction, and a new type of humour. The entire series of adventures is a triumphant progress. . . . Humour of a rich and active character pervades the delightful history of Manasseh. Mr. Zangwill's book is altogether very good reading. It is also very cleverly illustrated by Phil May and other artists.' The Daily Chronicle. — ' It is a beautiful story. The King of Schnorrers is that great rarity — an entirely new thing, that is as good as it is new.' THE CELIBATES' CLUB By I. ZANGWILL In One I 'olume, price 6s. The St. James's Gazette. — ' Mr. Zangwill's Bachelors' Club and Old Maids' Club have separately had such a success — as their sparkling humour, gay characterisation, and irresistible punning richly deserved — that it is no surprise to find Mr. Ileinemann now issuing them together in one volume. Readers who have not purchased the separate volumes will be glad to add this joint publication to their bookshelves. Others, who have failed to read either, until they foolishly imagined that it was too late, have now the best excuse for combining the pleasures of two. ' THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER By I. ZANGWILL and LOUIS COWEN In One I 'olume, price 6s. The Morning- Post.— 'The story is described as a " fantastic romance," and, indeed, fantasy reigns supreme from the first to the last of its pages. It relates the history of our time with humour and well-aimed sarcasm. All the most prominent characters of the day, whether political or otherwise, come in for notice. The identity of the leading politicians is but thinly veiled, while many celebrities appear in proprid persond. i London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W'.C. THE WORLD'S MERCY By MAXWELL GRAY In One Volume, price 6s. The Speaker. — 'Those who most admired The Silence of Dean Mait- landwWX find much to hold their attention, and to make them think in The World's Mercy.' The Daily Telegraph. — 'The qualities of her pen make all of Maxwell Gray's work interesting, and the charm of her writing is unalterable. _ If The World's Mercy is painful, it is undeniably forcible and dramatic, and it holds the reader from start to finish.' THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN TREASURE By MAXWELL GRAY In One Volume, price 6s. The Chronicle. — 'There is a strong and pervading charm in this new novel by Maxwell Gray. ... It is full of tragedy and irony, though irony is not the dominant note.' The Times. — ' Its buoyant humour and lively character-drawing will be found very enjoyable.' The Daily Mail. — ' The book becomes positively great, fathoming a depth of human pathos which has not been equalled in any novel we have read for years past. . . . The House of Hidden Treasure is not a novel to be bor- rowed ; it is a book to be bought and read, and read again and again.' THE LAST SENTENCE By MAXWELL GRAY In One Volume, price 6s. The Standard. — ' The Last Sentences a remarkable story; it abounds with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the chnractcrs are well drawn and consistent.' The Daily Telegraph. — 'One of the most powerful and adroitly woiked- out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last Sentence. . . . This terrible tale of retribution is told with well-sustained force and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade.' SWEETHEARTS AND FRIENDS By MAXWELL GRAY In One Volume, price 6s. London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER By MAXWELL GRAY /// One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum.—' Brightly and pleasantly written, Maxwell Gray's new story will entertain all readers who can enjoy the purely sentimental in fiction.' The Scotsman.— 'The story is full of bright dialogue: it is one of the pleasantest and healthiest novels of the season.' HEARTS IMPORTUNATE By EVELYN DICKINSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Telegraph. — 'Happy in title and successful in evolution, Miss Dickinson's novel is very welcome. We have read it with great pleasure, due not only to the interest of the theme, but to an appreciation of the artistic method, and the innate power of the authoress. It is vigorous forcible, convincing.' The Pall Mall Gazette.—' An enjoyable book, and a clever one.' THE HIDDEN MODEL By FRANCES HARROD In One Volume, price 6s. The Outlook. — ' Intensely dramatic and moving. We have sensitive analysis of character, sentiment, colour, agreeable pathos.' The Athenaeum. — 'A good story simply told and undidactic, with men and women in it who are creatures of real flesh and blood. An artistic coterie is described briefly and pithily, with humour and without exaggeration. ' The Academy. — ' A pathetic little love idyll, touching, plaintive, and not without a kindly and gentle fascination.' Literature. — ' A remarkably original and powerful story : one of the most interesting and original books of the year.' The Sunday Special. — 'Thrilling from cover to cover.' SAWDUST By DOROTHEA GERARD In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — ' Once again Dorothea Gerard has shown considerable ability in the delineation of diverse characters — ability as evident in the minor as in the chief persons ; and, what is more, she gets her effects without any undue labouring of points as to the goodness or badness of her people.' The Pall Mall Gazette.— ' The little town of Zanee, a retired spot in the lower Carpathians, is the Fcene of Miss Gerard's book. Remote enough, geographically ; but the writer has not seen her Galician peasants as foreigners, nor has she made them other than entirely human. Human, too, are the scheming Jews, the Polish Counts and Countesses, the German millionaire. The story is simple and eminently natural.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street. W.C. GLORIA MUNDI By HAROLD FREDERIC In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — * Mr. Harold Frederic has here achieved a triumph of characterisation rare indeed in fiction, even in such fiction as is given us by our greatest. Gloria Mundi is a work of art ; and one cannot read a dozen of its pages without feeling that the artist was an informed, large-minded, tolerant man of the world.' The St. James's Gazette. — ' It is packed with interesting thought as well as clear-cut individual and living character, and is certainly one of the few striking serious novels, apart from adventure and romance, which have been produced this year.' ILLUMINATION By HAROLD FREDERIC In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — 'There is something more than the mere touch of the vanished hand that wrote The Scarlet Letter in Illumination, which is the best novel Mr. Harold Frederic has produced, and, indeed, places him very near if not quite at the head of the newest school of American fiction.' The Manchester Guardian. — 'It is a long time since a book of such genuine importance has appeared. It will not only afford novel-readers food for discussion during the coming season, but it will eventually fill a recognised place in English fiction.' THE MARKET-PLACE By HAROLD FREDERIC In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' Harold Frederic stood head and shoulders above the ordinary run of novelists. The Market- Place seizes the imagination and holds the reader's interest, and it is suggestive and stimulating to thought.' The Bookman. — ' Incomparably the best novel of the year. It is a ruthless exposure, a merciless satire. Both as satire and romance it is splendid reading. As a romance of the " City " it has no equal in modern fiction.' THE LAKE OF WINE By BERNARD CAPES In One Volume, price 6s. W. E. Henley in ' The Outlook.' — ' Mr. Capes's devotion to style does him yeoman service all through this excellent romance. ... I have read no book for long which contented me as this book. This story — excellently invented and excellently done — is one no lover of romance can afford to leave unread.' The St. James's Gazette. — 'The love-motif is of the quaintest and daintiest; the clash of arms is Stevensonian. . . . There is a vein of mystery running through the book, and greatly enhancing its interest.' London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. VIA LUCIS By KASSANDRA VIVARIA In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Telegraph. — 'Perhaps never before has there been related with such detail, such convincing honesty, and such pitiless clearsightedness, the tale of misery and torturing perplexity, through which a young and ardent seeker after truth can struggle. It is all so strongly drawn. The book is simply and quietly written, and gains in force from its clear, direct style. Every page, every descriptive line bears the stamp of truth.' The Morning Post. — ' Via Lucis is but one more exercise, and by no means the least admirable, on that great and inexhaustible theme which has inspired countless artists and poets and novelists — the conflict between the aspirations of the soul for rest in religion and of the heart for human love and the warfare of the world.' THE OPEN QUESTION By ELIZABETH ROBINS In One Volume, price 6s. The St. James's Gazette. — 'This is an extraordinarily fine novel. . . . We have not, for many years, come across a serious novel of modern life which has more powerfully impressed our imagination, or created such an instant conviction of the genius of its writer. . . . We express our own decided opinion that it is a book which, setting itself a profound human problem, treats it in a manner worthy of the profoundest thinkers of the time, with a literary art and a fulness of the knowledge of life which stamp a master novelist. ... It is not meat for little people or for fools ; but for those who care for English fiction as a vehicle of the constructive intellect, building up types of living humanity for our study, it will be a new revelation of strength, and strange, serious beauty.' BELOW THE SALT By ELIZABETH ROBINS In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — 'All cleverly told, vivacious, life-like, observant sketches. Were we to award the palm where all are meritorious, it should be to the delightful triplet entitled "The Portman Memoirs." These three sketches are positively exhilarating. We can sincerely recommend them as certain cures for the vapours, the spleen, or the " blues." ' THE STORY OF EDEN By DOLF WVLLARDE In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — ' The story is an outstanding one. There are passages of thought and colour which gladden, and characters which interest, as the living only do. A light wit beams through the dialogue. On the whole, bravo ! DolfWyllaide:' The Standard. — 'A remarkable book, fresh and courageous. The writer has a sense of things as they are, and describes them simply and vividly. The book is well written, and the pictures of social life in Wynberg are excellent.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. ST. IVES By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' Neither Stevenson himself nor any one else has given us a better example of a dashing story, full of life and colour and interest. St. Ives is both an entirely delightful personage and a narrator with an enthralling style — a character who will be treasured up in the memory along with David Balfour and Alan Breck, even with D'Artagnan and the Musketeers.' THE EBB-TIDE By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AND LLOYD OSBOURNE In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — 'We are swept along without a pause on the current of the animated and vigorous narrative. Each incident and adven- ture is told with that incomparable keenness of vision which is Mr. Stevenson's greatest charm as a story-teller.' The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'It is brilliantly invented, and it is not less brilliantly told. There is not a dull sentence in the whole run of it. And the style is fresh, alert, full of surprises — in fact, is very good latter-day Stevenson indeed.' THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY By LLOYD OSBOURNE In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' Of the nine stories in this volume, not one falls below a notably high level, while three or four of them at least attain what short stories not often do, the certainty that they will be re-read, and vividly remembered between re-readings. Mr. Osbourne writes often with a deli- cious rollick of humour, sometimes with a pathos from which tears are not far remote, and always with the buoyancy and crispness without which the short story is naught, and with which it can be so much.' The Outlook. — 'These stories are admirable. They are positive good things, wanting not for strength, pathos, humour, observation.' CHINATOWN STORIES By C. B. FERNALD In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — 'We feel that Mr. Femald has described the Chinese character with extraordinary accuracy. His range is considerable; he begins this volume, for example, with an idyllic story of an adorable Chinese infant. . . . This is sheer good-humour, and prcttincss and colour. And at the end of the book is one of the grimmest anil ablest yarns of Chinese piracy and high sea villainy that any one has written, Stevenson not excluded. In each of these we see the hand of a very capable literary artist. It is a fascinating book.' London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE ASSASSINS By NEVILL M. MEAKIN In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' He brings home to his readers the spirit of awe — of allure- ment and terror — which his chosen place and period inspire. The opening chapters breathe the true spirit of romance. The Orient blazes in Mr. Meakin's descriptions. His pen is dipped in the period he portrays. It is iridescent with the mirage of the East ; glowing now with the life and clash and din of the Ismalians, and again with the victories of Saladin; powerful in its pictures of human passion, human ambition, and the tragedy of fate' The Standard.- ' The Assassins attracts us on its first page by the ex- cellence of its style, and the interest is kept up to the end.' A DAUGHTER OF THE VELDT By BASIL MARNAN In One Volume, price 6s. The Morning Post. — 'A strong, clever, and striking book. Mr. Basil Marnan has drawn some vivid and wholly new pictures. The book has scenes of dramatic power, told with simple directness.' The Daily Chronicle. — 'It has interested us profoundly, and has given us good and sufficient reason to hope that another novel from the same hand and with the same mise-en-sclne, may before very long come our way.' The Scotsman. — 'This is a South African novel which should arrest attention. It is of engrossing interest. Mr. Marnan has dramatic power, a vivid descriptive talent, and a rich and expressive style. He has written a remarkable book.' ON THE EDGE OF THE EMPIRE By EDGAR JEPSON and Captain D. BEAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — ' Of the wealth and interest and variety of the matter there can be no question. It might be called the Book of the Sepoy, for no writer, not even Mr. Kipling himself, has given us a deeper insight into the character of the Indian fighting man, or brought home to us more vividly the composite nature of our native regiments.' The Daily News.— 'The picturesque native soldier has never been more fully described or more realistically painted than in the present volume. The book is packed full of good stuff, and deserves to be widely read.' THE EAGLE'S HEART By HAMLIN GARLAND In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum.— ' Mr. Garland's work is always fresh and vigorous, and this story is full of his characteristic energy. He makes one share with delight in the irresistible fascination of wild life in the Far West.' The Illustrated London News.— 'If Mr. Hamlin Garland had never written anything else, The Eagle's Heart would suffice to win him a reputa- tion. It is a fine book, instinct with humanity, quivering with strength, and in every fibre of it alive.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE BETH BOOK By SARAH GRAND In One Volume, price 6s. Punch. — 'The heroine of The Beth Book is one of Sarah Grand's most fascinating creations. With such realistic art is her life set forth that, for a while, the reader will probably be under the impression that he has before him the actual story of a wayward genius compiled from her genuine diary. The story is absorbing ; the truth to nature in the characters, whether virtuous, ordinary, or vicious, every reader with some experience will recognise.' The Globe. — ' It is quite safe to prophesy that those who peruse The Beth Book will linger delightedly over one of the freshest and deepest studies of child character ever given to the world, and hereafter will find it an ever present factor in their literary recollections and impressions.' THE HEAVENLY TWINS By SARAH GRAND In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — ' It is so full of interest, and the characters are so eccentrically humorous yet true, that one feels inclined to pardon all its faults, and give oneself up to unreserved enjoyment of it. . . . The twins Angelica and Diavolo, young barbarians, utterly devoid of all respect, con- ventionality, or decency, are among the most delightful and amusing children in fiction.' The Daily Telegraph. — ' Everybody ought to read it, for it is an inex- haustible source of refreshing and highly stimulating entertainment.' Punch. — ' The Twins themselves are a creation : the epithet " Heavenly" for these two mischievous little fiends is admirable.' IDEALA By SARAH GRAND In One Volume, price 6s. The Morning Post. — 'It is remarkable as the outcome of an earnest mind seeking in good faith the solution of a difficult and ever present problem. . . . Idcala is original and somewhat daring. . . . The story is in many ways delightful and thought-suggesting.' The Liverpool Mercury. — 'The book is a wonderful one — an evangel for the fair sex, and at once an inspiration and a comforting companion, to which thoughtful womanhood will recur again and again.' OUR MANIFOLD NATURE By SARAH GRAND In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — 'All these studies, male and female alike, arc marked by humour, pathos, and fidelity to life. 1 The Speaker. — 'In Our Manifold Nature Sarah Grand is seen at her How good that is can only be known by those who read for them- Ive i this admirable little volume. ' The Guardian.- — ' Our Manifold Nature is a clever book. Sarah Grand has the power of touching common things, which, if it fails to make them "rise to touch the spheres," renders them exceedingly interesting.' London: WILLIAM 11EINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE LAND OF COCKAYNE By MATILDE SERAO In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' It is long since we have read, and indeed re-read, any book of modern fiction with so absorbing an interest as The Land of Cockayne, the latest book by Matilde Serao (Heinemann), and surely as fine a piece of work as the genius of this writer has yet accomplished. It is splendid ! The character-drawing is subtle and convincing ; every touch tells. Such books as The Land of Cockayne are epoch-making, voices that cry aloud in the wilderness of modern " literature," and will be heard while others only cackle.' THE BALLET DANCER By MATILDE SERAO In One Volume, price 6s. The Saturday Review. — ' The work of Madame Serao, a novelist with rare gifts of observation and faculties of execution, only needs a little more concentration on a central motive to rank among the finest of its kind, the short novel of realism. She curiously resembles Prosper Merimee in her cold, impersonal treatment of her subject, without digression or comment ; the drawing of clear outlines of action ; the complete exposure of motive and inner workings of impulse ; the inevitable development of given tem- peraments under given circumstances. She works with insight, with judg- ment, and with sincerity.' The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' Few living writers have given us anything equal to her splendid story The Land of Cockayne, and it is much to say that those who w'ere stirred to enthusiasm by that book will experience no reaction upon reading the two stories here bound together. Genius is not too big a word for her. ' THE SCOURGE-STICK By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED In One Volume, price 6s. The Observer. — ' Not only is The Scourge-Stick the best novel that Mrs. Praed has yet written, but it is one that will long occupy a prominent place in the literature of the age.' The Illustrated London News.— 'A singularly powerful study of a woman who fails in everything, only to rise on stepping-stones to higher things. A succession of strong, natural, and exciting situations.' Black and White. — 'A notable book which must be admitted by all to have real power, and that most intangible quality — fascination.' IN HASTE AND AT LEISURE By E. LYNN LINTON In One Volume, price 6s. The Literary World. — ' Whatever its exaggerations may be, Ln Haste and at Leisure remains a notable achievement. It has given us pleasure, and we can recommend it with confidence.' The World.—' It is clever, and well written.' The Graphic — ' It is thoroughly interesting, and it is full of passages that almost irresistibly tempt quotation.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C THE LONDONERS By ROBERT HICHENS In One Volume, price 6s. Punch. — ' Mr. Hichens calls his eccentric story "an absurdity," and so it is. As amusing nonsense, written in a happy-go-lucky style, it works up to a genuine hearty-laugh-extracting scene. . . . The Londoners is one of the most outrageous pieces of extravagant absurdity we have come across for many a day.' The Pall Mall Gazette.—' It is all screamingly funny, and does great credit to Mr. Hichens's luxuriant imagination.' AN IMAGINATIVE MAN By ROBERT HICHENS In One Volume, price 6s. The Scotsman. — 'It is no doubt a remarkable book. If it has almost none of the humour of its predecessor (The Green Carnation), it is written with the same brilliancy of style, and the same skill is shown in the drawing of accessories. Mr. Hichens's three characters never fail to be interesting. They are presented with very considerable power, while the background of Egyptian life and scenery is drawn with a sure hand.' THE FOLLY OF EUSTACE By ROBERT HICHENS In One Volume, price 6s. The World. — 'The little story is as fantastic and also as reasonable as could be desired, with the occasional dash of strong sentiment, the sudden turning on of the lights of sound knowledge of life and things that we find in the author when he is most fanciful. The others are weird enough and strong enough in human interest to make a name for their writer had his name needed making.' THE SLAVE By ROBERT HICHENS In One Volume, price 6s. The Speaker. — ' It tells an extremely interesting story, and it is full of entertaining episodes. Above all, the romance of London is treated as it has never been since the glorious reign of Prince Florizel of Bohemia, and, if only en that account, The Slave is a book for the busy to remember and for the leisurely to read.' The Daily Telegraph. — ' The book deserves to be widely rend. Sir Reuben Allabruth, a figure of real distinction, will take his place among the shades of fiction.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford STREET, W.C. FLAMES By ROBERT HICHENS In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — ' A cunning blend of the romantic and the real, the work of a man who can observe, who can think, who can imagine, and who can write. . . . And tlie little thumb-nail sketches of the London streets have the grim force of a Callot.' The World. - ' An exceedingly clever and daring work . . . a novel so weirdly fascinating and engrossing that the reader easily forgives its leng'.h. Its unllagging interest and strength, no less than its striking originality, both of design and treatment, will certainly rank it among the most notable novels of the season.' NUDE SOULS By BENJAMIN SWIFT In One Volume, price 6s. Mr. W. L. Courtney in the • Daily Telegraph.' — 'Any one who is so obviously sincere as Mr. Benjamin Swift is an author who must be reckoned with. The story is very vivid, very poignant, very fascinating.' The World. — 'Mr. Benjamin Swift was a bold man when he called his new story Nude Souls. There is a self-assertion about this title which only success could justify. Let it be said at once that the author has succeeded. lie lays absolutely bare before the reader the souls of a striking company of men and women. There is that about the book which makes the reader loth to put it down, loth to come to the end — comprehension of human nature, and relentless power of expression. ' THE REBEL By H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON In One Volume, price 6s. The Morning Post. — 'The tale is full of incidents and dramatic situa- tions ; the result commands our unstinted admiration. It is an extraordinarily brilliant performance. Though full of the most subtle character-drawing, The Rebel is in the main a story of adventure. And these adventures are related with such sharpness of outline, they are so vivid, and the style of the author is so brilliant throughout, that were there not a character in the book worth a moment's consideration, it would still be well worth reading.' SONS OF THE SWORD By MARGARET L. WOODS In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — 'To write a good Napoleon novel has long seemed to be one of those enterprises that attract authors only to overthrow and discomfit them. Yet Mrs. Woods has come out of this ordeal unscathed, and her good fortune places her in the front rank of living novelists. Not that it is merely the Napoleonic scenes which make Sons of the Sword a remarkable and admirable book. There is much in it besides the vivid glimpses of the Man of Destiny to attract and interest every kind of reader.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 2\ Bediord Street, W.C. THE AWKWARD AGE By HENRY JAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Outlook. — 'In The Awkward Age Mr. Henry James has surpassed himself.' The Daily Chronicle. — ' In delicacy of texture, his work, compared to the work of most, we are strongly inclined to say of all other novelists, is as a fabric woven of the finest spider's web to common huckaback. He suggests more by his reticences than he tells by his statements. . . . We should have to search far and wide in modern fiction to find artistry more finished, so consummate.' THE TWO MAGICS By HENRY JAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum.—' In The Two Magics, the first tale, " The Turn of the Screw," is one of the most engrossing and terrifying ghost stories we have ever read. The other story in the book, "Covering End," ... is in its way excellently told.' The Daily News. — ' It is a masterpiece of artistic execution. Mr. James has lavished upon it all the resources and subtleties of his art. The workman- ship throughout is exquisite in the precision of the touch, in the rendering of shades of spectral representation.' THE SPOILS OF POYNTON By HENRY JAMES /// One Volume, price 6s. The National Observer. — 'A work of brilliant fancy, of delicate humour, of gentle satire, of tragedy and comedy in appropriate admixture. We con- gratulate Mr. James without reserve upon the power, the delicacy, and the charm of a book of no common fascination.' The Manchester Guardian. — 'Delightful reading. The old felicity of phrase and epithet, the quick, subtle flashes of insight, the fastidious liking for the best in character and art, are as marked as ever, and give one an intellectual pleasure for which one cannot be too grateful. ' THE OTHER HOUSE By HENRY JAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily News. — 'A melodrama wrought with the exquisitcness of a madrigal. All the characters, however lightly sketched, are drawn with that clearness of insight, with those minute, accurate, unforeseen touches that tell of relentless observation.' The Scotsman. — 'A masterpiece of Mr. James's analytical genius and finished literary style. It also shows him at his dramatic best. He has never written anything in which insight and dramatic power arc so marvel- lously combined with line and delicate literary workmanship.' London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. WHAT MAISIE KNEW By HENRY JAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — ' We have read this book with amazement and delight : with amazement at its supreme delicacy ; with delight that its author retains an unswerving allegiance to literary conscience that forbids him to leave a slipshod phrase, or a single word out of its appointed place. There are many writers who can write dialogue that is amusing, convincing, real. But there is none who can reach Mr. James's extraordinary skill in tracing dialogue from the first vague impulse in the mind to the definite spoken word.' EMBARRASSMENTS By HENRY JAMES In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' Mr. James's stories are a continued protest against super- ficial workmanship and slovenly style. lie is an enthusiast who has devoted himself to keeping alive the sacred fire of genuine literature ; and he has his reward in a. circle of constant admirers.' The Daily News. — ' Mr. Henry James is the Meissonicr of literary art. In his new volume, we find all the exquisiteness, the precision of touch, that arc his characteristic qualities. It is a curiously fascinating volume.' The National Observer. — 'The delicate art of Mr. Henry James has rarely been seen to more advantage than in these stories.' The St. James's Gazette. — 'All four stories are delightful for admirable workmanship, for nicety and precision of presentation, and "The Way it Came " is beyond question a masterpiece.' TERMINATIONS By HENRY JAMES /// One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul arc in his profession of literature.' The Athenaeum. — ' The appearance of Terminations will in no way shake the general belief in Mr. Henry James's accomplished touch and command of material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since foregone, and will increase the respect of his readers. . . . With such passages of trenchant wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best manner, Mr. James ought to be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to be.' SOME WOMEN I HAVE KNOWN By MAARTEN MAARTENS In One Volume, price 6s. The Times. — ' Maarten Maartens here shows himself a master of the short story, and more of a cosmopolitan than we had suspected.' The Academy. — ' We have enjoyed the book, and we think it contains much excellent work. It has all the wit, the discretion, the worldliness of Mr. Anthony Hope's social studies. And it has, in addition, a genuine cosmopolitanism rare enough in English fiction.' The Outlook. — 'The women Mr. Maartens has known are various and inter- esting, and the episodes which he has chosen to depict are cleverly imagined.' The Scotsman. — 'Mr. Maarten Maartens displays all his genius as a humorist, a story-teller, and a painter of talent.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. THE DANCER IN YELLOW By W. E. NORRIS In One Volume, price 6s. The Guardian. — 'A very clever and finished study of a dancer at one of the London theatres. We found the book very pleasant and refreshing, and laid it down with the wish that there were more like it.' The World. — ' The Dancer in Yellow takes us by surprise. The story is both tragic and pathetic. . . . We do not think he has written any more clever and skilful story than this one, and particular admiration is due to the byways and episodes of the narrative.' THE WIDOWER By W. E. NORRIS In One Volume, price 6s. St. James's Gazette. — ' Mr. Norris's new story is one of his best. There is always about his novels an atmosphere of able authorship . . . and The Widower is handled throughout in the perfect manner to which Mr. Norris's readers are accustomed. ' Pall Mall Gazette. — ' There is distinction of all kinds in every paragraph, and the whole is worthy of the delicately-finished details. Mr. Norris is always delightfully witty, clever, and unfailing in delicacy and point of style and manner, breezily actual, and briskly passing along. In a word, he is charming.' MARIETTA'S MARRIAGE By W. E. NORRIS In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — 'A fluent style, a keen insight into certain types of human nature, a comprehensive and humorous view of modern society — these arc gifts Mr. Norris has already displayed, and again exhibits in his present volume. From the first chapter to the last, the book runs smoothly and briskly, with natural dialogue and many a piquant situation.' The Daily News. — ' Every character in the book is dexterously drawn. ?lr. Norris's book is interesting, often dramatic, and is the work of, if not a deep, a close and humorous observer of men and women.' A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK By W. E. NORRIS In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Chronicle. — ' It has not a dull page from first to last. Any one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real pleasure.' The Spectator. — 'The brightest and cleverest book which Mr. Norris has given us since he wrote The Rogue. The Saturday Review. — 'Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome, morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in th( se days, that .4 Victim of Good Luck . . . ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most part with light literature. . . . Wc think it will increase the reputation of an already very popular author.' London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Strf.et, W.C. THE COUNTESS RADNA By W. E. NORRIS In One Volume, price Os. The Speaker. — ' la style, skill in construction, and general "go," it is worth a dozen ordinary novels.' Black and White.—' The novel, like all Mr. Norris's work, is an exces- sively clever piece of work, and the author never for a moment allows his grasp of his plot and his characters to slacken.' The Westminster Gazette.— ' Mr. Norris writes throughout with much liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth remember- ing. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.' THE IMAGE BREAKERS By GERTRUDE DIX In One Volume, price 6s. The Outlook.—' We have here a book packed with thought, suggestive, sincere. The story is told supremely well. It has construction, it has atmosphere. The characters live, breathe, love, suffer. Everything is on the high plane of literature. It is a book of absorbing interest.' A PROPHET OF THE REAL By ESTHER MILLER In One Volume, price 6s. The Daily Telegraph.— 'Miss Miller's study is both striking and original. The young authoress knows how to tell her story, and her manner, the way in which she describes the emotions of her characters, is always adequate and often eloquent. She shows us the girl as she was in the days of her servitude, gives us all the illuminating details of her sordid existence ; then she shows us the pathetic blossoming of the nipped bud under the influence of kindness, the transformation of the morbid girl into a beautiful and gracious woman. Miss Miller is really to be congratulated on her heroine. The study is interesting and faithful.' THE GLOWWORM By MAY BATEMAN In One Volume, price 6s. The Academy. — ' It has quite a character of its own ; it has charm and it has feeling. The minor characters are all good, and there is a pleasant humour always at hand to relieve a story otherwise tragical enough.' Punch.—' A clever, well- written story.' Truth. — 'As interesting as it is original.' The Morning- Post. — 'It is distinctly a fine piece of fiction, for the author can delineate character with precision and sympathy, and her style is admirably polished.' The Daily Telegraph. — ' Miss Bateman has given us a very careful and sympathetic story ot the successive phases of a fine nature ; the character is consistently developed with a tender compassion for the impracticable and appreciation for the beautiful. The authoress has, moreover, a fund of shrewd common-sense which, combined with keen observation and humour, makes her book both readable and entertaining.' London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. GILLETTE'S MARRIAGE By MAMIE BOWLES hi One Volume, price 6s. The Athenaeum. — ' This is an extraordinarily clever performance and will be found most absorbing. The characterisation is excellent, the dialogue natural and alive, the emotion poignant and real.' The Pall Mall Gazette.—' It is decidedly clever and human, and the brilliantly bold heroism of Gillette's final act of self-sacrifice is effective. One must always admit its undeniable power.' THE FALL OF LORD PADDOCKSLEA By LIONEL LANGTON In One Volume, price 6s. The World. — * A very clever and good-humoured jrV?« d" 'esprit. The talk is excellent, the atmosphere of worldliness and self-interest tempered by the very best manners and form, the verisimilitude of Lady Killiecrankie, are all much to be commended.' The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Amusing snapshots of current political life.' The Westminster Gazette. — 'A clever and ingenious story of political life, told with a touch of cynicism which is redeemed by a background of romance.' The Standard. — 'Will no doubt be read with amusement by those who find delight in the personal journalism of the day, and have the curiosity to fit the characters to the originals. There is enough bright writing in the book to make it a pleasant companion.' THE WHITE TERROR By FELIX GRAS In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — ' The fascination of The Reds of the Midi and The Terror is exerted with equal force and charm in their brilliant sequel, The White Terror. Few narratives in modern fiction are more thrilling. M. Gras has the gift of achieving the most vivid and poignant results by a method devoid of artifice or elaboration. The narrative is a masterpiece of simplicity and naivete: a stirring and richly coloured recital.' The Daily Chronicle. — 'The book is full of living pictures. The feverishness, the uncertainty, of everything and everybody are most power- fully brought out.' THE TERROR By FELIX GRAS In One Volume, price 6s. The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Those who shared Mr. Gladstone's admiration for The Reds of the A/idi will renew it when they read The Terror. It is a stirring and vivid story, full of perilous and startling adventures, and with- out one interval of dulncss. ... It excites and absorbs the reader's atten- tion. The excitement grows with the development of the plot, and the incidents are told with much spirit.' London: WILLIAM 11KINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. BY BREAD ALONE Bv I. k. FRIEDMAN In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — 'A remarkably interesting, able, and right-minded study of the labour question in the United States. The employer, the capitalist, the "hands," the Socialist, the Anarchist, the would-be Savioui of Society,— all are fully, sympathetically, and convincingly presented. There are powerful scenes in the book ; there are characters that touch.' The Athenaeum. — 'There are descriptions which tell. There are remark- able scenes painted, as it were, with blood and fire. Man and machinery in grim revolt are portrayed, with hand-to-hand fights and many gruesome death-scenes.' LOVE AND HIS MASK By MENIE MURIEL DOWIE In One Volume, price 6s. Literature. — ' All of the many different kinds of novel readers will enjoy Love and his Mask. . . . The story is a refreshment from beginning to end. J.cze and his Mask will be one of the most popular novels of the autumn season.' The Daily Chronicle. — ' A delightful romance.' Punch. — ' A very clever novel, brightly written.' FOREST FOLK By JAMES PRIOR In One Volume, price 6s. The Spectator. — ' We have no hesitation in welcoming Forest Folk as one of the very best and most original novels of the year, and our only regret is that we have failed to proclaim the fact sooner. The characterisation is excellent, the narrative is crowded with exciting incident, and the author has, in addition to an eye for the picturesque, a quite peculiar gift for describing effects of light and colour.' The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Mr. Prior has a large knowledge and is a keen observer of nature ; he is cunning in devising strong situations, dramatic in describing them. His are forest folk indeed, men and women of flesh and blood.' TANGLED TRINITIES By DANIEL WOODROFFE In One Volume, price 6s. The St. James's Gazette. — ' Full of live people, whom one remembers long. The whole book is charming.' The Illustrated London News. — 'Mr. Woodroffe writes with admirable clearness, picturesqueness, and restraint ; he has an eye for character, and a grip of tragic possibilities. It is a moving story, and stamps the author as one of the few real artists who are now writing English fiction.' London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO'S NOVELS W. L. Courtney in the Daily Telegraph.— D'Annunzio is one of the great artistic energies of the age. He is the incarnation of the Latin genius just as Rudyard Kipling is the incarnation of the Anglo-Saxon genius. He has invented new harmonies of prose. In One Volume^ price 6s. each THE FLAME OF LIFE The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'A work of genius, unique, astounding. There are passages that sweep one headlong, and the whole leaves an indelible impression.' The Standard. — ' The pages are rich in symbolic imagery, in beautiful word-pictures of Venice, and are saturated by the spirit of the Renaissance in its most luxurious form.' THE CHILD OF PLEASURE The Academy. — '. . . Clever, subtle, to the point of genius.' The Daily Mail. — 'A powerful study of passion, masterly of its kind.' The Daily Graphic. — 'The poetic beauty and richness of the language make it a sensuous, glowing poem in prose. ' The Scotsman. — ' The strength of the book lies in the intensity with which the writer brings out the pleasures and pains of his creatures.' THE VICTIM The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' No word but "genius" will fit his analysis of the mental history of the faithless husband.' The Daily Chronicle. — 'The book contains many descriptive passages of rare beauty — passages which by themselves are lovely little prose lyrics. . . . It is a self-revelation ; the revelation of the sort of self that D'Annunzio delineates with a skill and knowledge so extraordinary. The soul of the man, raw, bruised, bleeding, is always before us.' THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'A masterpiece. The story holds and haunts one. Unequalled even by the great French contemporary whom, in his realism, D'Annunzio most resembles, is the account of the pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin by the sick, deformed, and afflicted. It is a great prose poem, that, of its kind, cannot be surpassed. Every detail of the scene is brought before us in a series of word-pictures of wonderful power and vivid colouring, and the ever-recurring refrain Viva Maria! Maria Ewiva ! rings in our ears as we lay down the book. It is the work of a master, whose genius is beyond dispute.' THE VIRGINS OF THE ROCKS The Daily Chronicle. — ' I le writes beautifully, and this book, by the way, is most admirably translated. The picture he presents of these three princesses in their sun-baked, mouldering, sleepy palace is, as we look back upon it, strangely impressive and even haunting.' London: WILLIAM 1IEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. U DEC - 261974- Form L9-60m-7,'64 (5990)444 ">s angk.es 11 UC SOUTuPDk °°0 380 344 I PLEA c iI DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD ! ^■LIBRARYQc a ^OJITVDJO^ University Research Library '