) in art.
Still this is a small defect in a book that is sincere in quality and
convincingly human in effect. _The Clintons and Others_ is certainly miles
away from the collections of reprinted pot-boilers that at one time brought
books of short stories into poor repute. Mr. MARSHALL and Others (a select
band) will rapidly correct this by giving us in small compass work equal to
their own best.

* * * * *

_Shuttered Doors_ (LANE) is what you might call a third-and-fourth-
generation story--one of those books, so rightly devastating to the
skipper, in which the accidental turning of two pages together is quite
liable to involve you with the great-grandchildren of the couple whose
courtship you have been perusing. Observe that I was careful to say the
"accidental" turning, though I can picture a type of reader who might soon
be fluttering the pages of _Shuttered Doors_ in impatient handfuls. The
fact is that Mrs. WILLIAM HICKS BEACH has here written what is less a novel
than a treatise, tasteful, informed and sympathetic, on county life and
manners and houses. The last of these themes especially has an undisguised
fascination for her. When _Aletta_, the chief heroine, was left pots of
money by a Dutch uncle (who was so far from filling his proverbial _role_
that he hardly talked at all) she spent it and her enthusiasm, indeed her
existence, in restoring two variously dilapidated mansions--Graythorpes,
her husband's home, and Doller Place, left her by an appreciative aunt.
When not thus employed she would be reading a paper on Homes (given here
_in extenso_), or comparing those of other persons with her own. I don't
want you to get the impression that _Shuttered Doors_ is precisely arid; it
is too full of ideas and vitalities for that; but it does undoubtedly
demand a special kind of reader. Incidentally, Mrs. HICKS BEACH should
revise her chronology. For _Aletta_, who was married at twenty-eight and
died at sixty-two, to have had at that time a grandson on the staff of the
Viceroy of India, he must have received his appointment before the age of
fifteen--which even in these experimental days sounds a little premature.

* * * * *

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the fact that the portrait on the
paper cover of _Maureen_ (JENKINS) does, I admit, remarkably suggest a lady
whose mission in life is the advertisement of complexion soap. You probably
know al