under the pseudonym "SAKI." I have but to name _The
Chronicles of Clovis_ for discriminating readers to know what their
loss was when MUNRO (who, although over age, had enlisted as a private
and refused a commission) fell fighting in the Beaumont-Hamel action
in November 1916. Mr. JOHN LANE has brought out, under the title _The
Toys of Peace_, a last collection of "SAKI'S" fugitive works, with a
sympathetic but all too brief memoir by Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS. Although
"SAKI" is only occasionally at his very best in this volume--on
the grim side, in "The Interlopers," and in his more familiar
irresponsible and high-spirited way in "A Bread-and-Butter Miss" and
"The Seven Cream Jugs;" although there may be no masterpiece of fun or
raillery to put beside, say, "Esme;" there is in every story a phrase
or fancy marked by his own inimitable felicity, audacity or humour.
It is good news that a complete uniform edition of his books is in
preparation.

* * * * *

I can't help feeling that ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY'S chief aim in
_Up the Hill and Over_ (HURST AND BLAOKETT) was to write a convincing
tract for the times on a subject which is achieving unhappy prominence
in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not.
One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not
enough another is "out of her head," while a third, _Dr. Callandar_,
the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.
This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's
love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a _precis_)
which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I
have the absurd idea that this might really have begun life as a
pathological thesis and suffered conversion into a novel. The author
has no conscience in the matter of the employment of the much-abused
device of coincidence. And I don't think the story would cure anyone
of drug-taking. On the contrary.

* * * * *

_The Three Black Pennys_ (HEINEMANN) is a story that began by
perplexing and ended by making a complete conquest of me. Its
author, Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER, is, I think, new to this side of
the Atlantic; the publishers tell me (and, to prevent any natural
misapprehension, I pass on the information at once) that he belongs
to "a Pennsylvania Dutch family, settled for many generations in
Philadelphia." Which being so, one can enjoy