daughter. In real life of course it is different. I know
a colour-sergeant, and somehow I rather think that if I--but never mind.
In Mr. JACOBS' beautiful world, as it is with _Mr. Farrer_ so is it with
_Peter Russet_, with _Ginger Dick_ and with _Sam Small_. They know when
the laugh is against them, and, waiving the appeal to force or to law,
they grumble but retire. There is one exercise in the gruesome in _Night
Watches_, but it hardly shows Mr. JACOBS at his best in this particular
vein. There are also several charming illustrations by Mr. STANLEY
DAVIS, executed with a buff tint, which help to sustain the gossamer
illusion.

* * *

If I were a woman I should always be a little irritated with any story
which shows two women in love with the same man. Miss MAY SINCLAIR in
her new novel does not mind how much she annoys her own sex. She shows
us no fewer than three women engaged in this competition, and they are
sisters. True, there was not much choice for them in their lonely
moorland village, which contained a young doctor and no other eligible
man. Of this fellow _Rowcliffe_ we are told that "his eyes were liable
in repose to become charged with a curious and engaging pathos," an
attraction which had broken many hearts before the story opened, and
gave to their owner a great sense of confidence in himself. This set me
against him at the start, but the three sisters, as I said, were not in
a position to be fastidious. _Mary's_ love for him was of the
social-domestic kind; _Gwenda's_ was spiritual; _Alice's_ frankly
physical. Though alleged to be "as good as gold," _Alice_, the youngest
of _The Three Sisters_ (HUTCHINSON), was one of those hysterical women
who threaten to die or go mad unless they get married--a very unpleasant
fact for a young doctor to have to discuss with her sister, and for us
to read about. Indeed, if I were to tell in all its incredible crudity
the story of the relations of this gently-bred girl with the drunken
farmer who, to her knowledge, had previously betrayed her own
servant-girl, I think even Miss SINCLAIR would be revolted. Her exposure
of certain secret things which common decency agrees to leave in silence
is a treachery to her sex, not excusable on grounds of physiological
interest; and I, for one, who was loud in my praise of the fine
qualities of her great romance, _The Divine Fire_, confess to a sense of
almost personal sorrow that such high gifts as hers, which still sho