following cablegram from her own mother's house:
"You have acted as a good son and a faithful husband. Bring back with
you the mother of our (_sic_) child." And so, the author evidently
feels, it all ended happily. His book is an interesting and amusing
presentment of an older civilisation, but if it won't strain the
_Entente_ I am bound to say that I disagree with his conclusions.

* * * * *

I fear it may sound an unkindly criticism, but my abiding trouble with
_Broken Colour_ (LANE) was an inability to get any of the characters,
with perhaps one exception, to come alive or behave otherwise than as
parts of a thoroughly nice-mannered and unsensational story. Perhaps
it was my own fault. Mr. HAROLD OHLSON (whose previous book I liked)
has obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, done his best for these
people. It is a tale of two rivalries: that for the heroine, between
the penniless artist-hero and a pound-full other; and that in the
breast of the p.a.h., between the flesh-pots of commerce and the
world-well-lost-for-Chelsea. It is typical of Mr. OHLSON'S care that,
though one would in such a situation nine times out of ten be safe
in backing Art for the double event, he makes so even a match of it
between _Hubert_ and _Ralph_ that he leaves the heroine ringing the
door-bell of the one immediately after kissing the other. You observe
that I was perhaps really more interested in the contest than
my opening words would suggest, but it was always in a detached
story-book way; except in the case of a mildly unsympathetic
secretary, represented as having spent too much time in the
contemplation of other persons' affluence, also as owning an
expensive-looking stick that made him long to be as rich as it caused
him to appear. I hate to think that there can have been anything here
to touch a chord in the reviewing breast, but the fact remains that
_Mr. Burnham_ stands out for me as the only genuinely human figure in
the book.

* * * * *

Blessed, no doubt, is the nation or the man without a history, but
blessed too is the biographer who has something definite to write
about. Mr. C. CARLISLE TAYLOR, in putting together his _Life of
Admiral Mahan_ (MURRAY), the American naval philosopher and prophet,
must have felt this keenly, for rarely can a man whose work was so
important that he simply had to have a biography have done so few
things of the kind that help