sting
autobiographical volume, _A Personal Record_ (1912), represent
Conrad's production. Among his ablest books are _Tales of Unrest_
(1898), a volume of sea stories, and _Lord Jim_ (1900), a novel full
of the fascination of strange seas and shores, but still more
remarkable for its searching analysis of a man's recovery of
self-respect after a long period of remorse for failure to meet a
momentary crisis. _Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other Tales_ (1902),
contains one of Conrad's strongest stories, _The End of the Tether_.
This is a tender story of an old sea captain, who for the sake of a
cherished daughter holds his post against terrific odds, including
blindness and disgrace. _Typhoon_ (1903) is an almost unrivaled
account of a ship's fight against mad hurricanes and raging seas.

One of Conrad's prime distinctions is his power to visualize scenes.
The terror, beauty, caprice, and mercilessness of the sea; the silence
and strangeness of the impenetrable tropical forest; atmospheres tense
with storm or brilliant with sunshine,--these he records with strong
effect. But though he has gained his fame largely as a chronicler of
remote seas and shores, his handling of the human element is but
little less impressive.

Conrad's method is unusual. Though his sentences are sufficiently
direct and terse, his general order of narration is not
straightforward. He often seems to progress slowly at the start, but
after the characters have been made familiar, the story proceeds to
its powerful and logical conclusion.

Arnold Bennett.--Bennett was born in Hanley, North Staffordshire, in
1867. He studied law, but abandoned it to become for seven years an
editor of _Woman_, a London periodical. In 1900 he resigned this
position to devote himself entirely to literature. He went to France
to live, and began to write novels under the influence of the French
and Russian realistic novelists.

[Illustration: ARNOLD BENNETT.]

Bennett is the author of many works of uneven merit. Some of these
were written merely to strike the popular taste and to sell. His
serious, careful work is seen at its best in his stories of the _Five
Towns_, so called from the small towns of his native Staffordshire.
One of the best of these novels, _The Old Wives' Tale_ (1908), is a
painstaking record of the different temperaments and experiences of
two sisters, from their happy childhood to a pathetic, disillusioned
old age. The intimate, homely revelations