uarded dining-room of the
country-house and the staggered minions of the local constabulary--are
assuaged by the brilliant narrative manner in which _The Wisdom of
Father Brown_ (CASSELL) is set forth. Here is the paradoxical world of
Mr. CHESTERTON'S imagination described in his own verbiage and proved by
actual and grisly events. In that starry dream of a detective story
which I sometimes have, where sleuth-hounds are pattering along the
Milky Way and pursue at last the Great Bear to his den, _Father Brown_
and _Sherlock Holmes_, the one spectacled, the other lynx-eyed, are
following the prey in leash.

* * * * *

Should you, among wild by-ways of Donegal or Connemara, meet a
procession composed of _Patsy McCann_ the Tinker and the Ass and _Mary_
with _Finaun_ the Archangel, _Caeltia_ the Seraph, _Art_ the Cherub,
_Eileen ni Cooley_ (a savage lady of easy morals), _Billy the Music_,
the Seraph Cuchulain and _Brien O'Brien_, a lost soul who had a
threepenny-bit stolen on him by _Cuchulain_ that same, you would guess
there's only one living man could be behind it--to wit JAMES STEPHENS,
_Crock-of-Gold_ STEPHENS. Fantastic things indeed happen in _The
Demi-Gods_ (MACMILLAN), which is a kind of inspired nightmare, a sort of
Chestertonian inconsequence done into Gaelic, a little less violent and
with a little less malt, but even less coherent. At the risk of being
reckoned among the egregiously imperceptive I would ask Mr. STEPHENS
solemnly whether he is not in danger of letting his fancy take bit
between teeth and land him in some bog of sheer literary chaos. The most
distant of the futurists notwithstanding, there must be some rules to
the game or you don't get your work of art. When those modern wizards of
the halls set themselves to a piece of _bizarre_ juggling, say, with a
string of pearls, a dumb-bell and a rose-petal, they do toss and
catch--don't merely let everything just drop. Mr. STEPHENS will know
what I mean without caring overmuch. There's something in it all the
same. Anyway, there really are in _The Demi-Gods_ delicate shy pearls
and gleams of the authentic gold of the original _Crock_. And after all
it wasn't written for middle-aged gentlemen of the Saxon tribe.

* * * * *

Illustration: GERMAN SPIES TAKING LESSONS FROM CONJURER IN THE ART OF
CONCEALING PIGEONS.

* * * * *

Another Impending Apology.