low her
vicissitudes in detail. Throughout the book the most sinister thing in
her story was to me the fact that a woman had written it. Moreover I
have a lurking suspicion that the portrait is no imaginary one. Perhaps
this is a high tribute to Miss CALLAGHAN'S skill; it certainly is meant
to be a compliment to her courage.

* * *

I've often longed to come upon
Some giant spoor and dog the track till
I ran to earth a mastodon,
A dinosaur, a pterodactyl;
But I supposed my natal date--
However distantly I view it--
Was several thousand years too late
To give me any chance to do it.

And yet Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Has found a man who's penetrated
Through bush and swamp on virgin soil
And seen the things I've indicated,
Creatures with names that clog your pen--
Dimorphodon and plesiosaurus--
And carried home a specimen
To silence any doubting chorus.

In _The Lost World_[A] the tale is told
(SMITH, ELDER do it cheap) in diction
So circumstantial that its hold
Is more than that of common fiction;
If you can run the story through,
By aid of portraits when you need it,
And not be half convinced it's true,
You simply don't deserve to read it.

[Footnote A: New Edition, with illustrations.]

* * *

There is nothing wrong with Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS' latest collection of
short stories, _The Judge's Chair_ (MURRAY), but there is something
vigorously to protest against upon the wrapper that covers them. For
there I found an uncompromising statement to the effect that these
stories "bring to a conclusion the author's Dartmoor work," and no
sooner had I read it than my heart sank into my heels. Solemnly I plead
with him to reconsider this decision, for if he does not his innumerable
admirers will be deprived of something almost as annual and quite as
enjoyable as Christmas. If he wants a holiday let him have one by all
means, though personally I was not pleased when he left Dartmoor for
Italy. But let it be only a holiday, a break in his real business. As
for the book, I advise everyone who can appreciate dry humour and quaint
philosophy to sit behind _The Judge's Chair_. "The Two Farmers" is in
its way a masterpiece, grim and very real, and there is not the ghost of
a sign in the whole collection that Mr. PHILLPOTTS has written of
Dartmoor until he is tired of it or it of him. He has made a niche for
himself in that old temple of