ines; the maker of Presidents, the master of
Congress, the terror of the financial world. The methods by which he
achieves these results make up the action of the story; they are such
as we are all familiar with, except, perhaps, in the combination which
Mr. Phillips makes of them.

The love element is of minor importance, and doubtless, to some minds,
it will be considered unattractive. But no one can deny that the
story, as a whole, is one of more than ordinary power.

* * * * *

The Harpers publish another new story by Warwick Deeping, "The
Slanderers." It is a novel which, in style, so suggests George
Meredith as to make one suspect that the author is a pupil of the
older writer.

A pair of idealists, quite realistic, nevertheless, in their
introduction to one another, and in the attachment which follows, are
the chief actors in the plot. Gabriel Strong, the dreamy son of a
prosperous English squire, falls in love with Joan Gildersledge, the
equally dreamy daughter of a bestial and intemperate miser. Gabriel
marries an unsatisfactory young woman in the vicinity, Ophelia Gusset,
and retains Joan as his consoler and friend in a virtuous but
high-strung companionship, out of which the country gossips, who hear
of it through a spying servant, develop a slander.

Gabriel's wife, meantime, is amusing herself with a military man at a
watering place. The clearing up of this situation, and the pairing off
of congenial couples with various striking episodes, among them the
death of Zeus Gildersledge, and his denunciation of his daughter, and
the final reconciliation of Gabriel with his father, by whom he has
been disinherited, make up a tale in which interest is sustained to
the very end. The book is full of dainty descriptions of landscape,
and the few leading personalities are well and strongly drawn.

* * * * *

"The Master Word," by L. H. Hammond, Macmillan, is described upon the
title-page as "a story of the South of to-day." Its background is
placed in the phosphate region of Tennessee, and the author assures us
that many of the incidents described, "especially those more or less
sensational in their nature," actually occurred within her own
experience. The purpose of the story, she says, furthermore, is "in
full accord with Southern thoughts and hopes."

It is hardly necessary to say that it would not be a story of the
South if it did not deal in s