othy Speare's second novel, let me suggest that those who have
not done so read her first, _Dancers in the Dark_. That a young woman just
out of Smith College should write this novel, that the novel should then
begin immediately selling at a great rate, and that David Belasco should
demand a play constructed from the novel is altogether a sequence to cause
surprise. I have had letters from older people who said frankly that they
could not express themselves about _Dancers in the Dark_, because it dealt
with a life with which they were utterly unfamiliar--which, in some cases,
they did not know existed. And yet it does exist! The demand for the book,
the avidity with which it has been read and the intemperance with which it
has been discussed testify that in _Dancers in the Dark_ Miss Speare wrote
a book with truth in it. I suppose it might be said of her first
novel--though I should not agree in saying it--that, like F. Scott
Fitzgerald's _This Side of Paradise_, it had every conceivable fault
except the fatal fault; it did not fail to live. The amount of publicity
that this book received was astonishing. I have handled clippings from
newspapers all over the country--and not mere "items" but "spreads" with
pictures--in which the epigrammatic utterances of the characters in
_Dancers_ were reprinted and their truth or falsity debated hotly. Is the
modern girl an "excitement eater"? Does she "live from man to man and
never kill off a man"? There was altogether too much smoke and heat in the
controversy for one to doubt the existence, underneath the surface of Miss
Speare's fiction, of glowing coals. And Miss Speare? Well, it is a fact
that, like her heroine in _Dancers_, she has an exceptional voice; and I
understand that she intends to cultivate the voice and to continue as a
writer, both. That is a very difficult programme to lay out for one's
self, but I really believe her capable of succeeding in both halves of the
programme.

Another distinctly popular novel, _The Moon Out of Reach_, by Margaret
Pedler, is the fruit of a well-developed career as a novelist. _The Hermit
of Far End_, _The House of Dreams Come True_, _The Lamp of Fate_, and _The
Splendid Folly_ were the forerunners of this immediate and distinct
success. Mrs. Pedler is the wife of a sportsman well known in the West of
England, the nearest living descendant of Sir Francis Drake. They have a
lovely home in the country and Mrs. Pedler, besides the joys of her