ion are too interesting to be readily parted with; I should, for
instance, have liked to see how that gentleman convict, _Mr. Trimm_,
fared when, after his odd vicissitudes, he was restored to the clutches
of the Law and was set on to do his time with the worst of them. There
was plenty of criminal company available, for Mr. Cobb makes some
speciality of perpetrators of dark deeds, and I feel that all the
characters and events of the subsequent stories could, with a little
ingenuity, have been worked into the one plot with our fraudulent
financier as the centrepiece. That wrong-headed but chivalrous relic of
the Southern Confederacy, _Major Putnam Stone_, would fit in as the
virtuous or comic relief, his inborn lust for battle and his chance
employment as a newspaper reporter being just the things to combat these
felonious activities. There is certainly a lack of lovable women in the
book, yet I have always been led to suppose that the U.S.A., the _locus
in quo_, overflows with feminine charm, and our author is obviously man
enough to appreciate and reproduce it for us. However, even a critic
must take things as they are, and it is a collection of short stories
that I have to complain about. My complaint, then, reduces itself to
this, that in the case of each of them I regret their shortness.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Jovial Person (to sweep)._ "Hullo, Chawlie me boy. Glad
ter see yer lookin' so well."]

* * * * *

_Mr. Lloyd George (to shade of Pitt)._ "Peace hath her income-tax no
less renowned than War."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, May
13, 1914, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***

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