s last an admirable study) do in varying degrees
contrive to avoid the deadly infection. This tract needed writing. I
have a feeling that it could be better done and by ROSE MACAULAY.
But it makes excellent reading as it is.... The pachyderm will wince,
shake himself and be left grinning.

* * * * *

Mr. ARNOLD PALMER derives the title of _My Profitable Friends_ (SELWYN
AND BLOUNT) from a verse, new to me, in which the poet, apparently
when launching her wares, concludes,

"But who has pain has songs to sell;
My Profitable Friends, farewell!"

which I take to be the pleasantest way in the world of calling them
pot-boilers. But whether they were so intended or not, there can be no
question of the very agreeable dexterity that Mr. PALMER brings to the
composition of his tales. Save for a few experiments (which I should
call the least successful in the collection) his formula is not the
episodical "slice of life," with crumbly edges. His choice is for the
well-made, with usually some ingenious little twist at the finish,
and (so to speak) a neatly tied bow to end all. As an instance of this
kind I commend to your notice the admirably shaped little yarn called
"Two-penn'orth." Mr. PALMER has a pretty wit (perhaps here and there
a trifle thin), shown nowhere to better advantage than in "A Picked
Eleven," one of the most entertaining, and at the same time
human, short stories that I have ever read. Further, his tales are
essentially of the friendly order, and the public will be in fault if
they do not also prove profitable, since we have none too many writers
capable of getting such deft results with the same economy of means.

* * * * *

In most stories constructed on the _Enoch Arden_ principle one of the
husbands or wives (whichever it may be of whom there are too many) is
usually a very nasty person. Miss SOPHIE COLE, in _The Cypress Tree_
(MILLS AND BOON), makes all three of her entangled characters quite
attractive; in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I
really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books
made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody
and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's
speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of
her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old
black-letter volume which infects every