adventure.

Among his books on simple Cornish life may be mentioned _The
Delectable Duchy_ (1893). It is a collection of short stories and
sketches. Quiller-Couch sees life without a touch of morbid somberness
and he commands a vivacious, highly-trained style.

William Frend De Morgan was born in London, in 1839. He published
his first novel, _Joseph Vance_ (1906), at the age of sixty-seven.
This plain, straightforward story of a little boy befriended by a
generous-hearted London doctor won for De Morgan wide and hearty
applause. While some contemporary writers fashion their style and
select their material on the models of French or Russian realists, De
Morgan goes to the great English masters, Thackeray and Dickens. Like
them, De Morgan writes copiously and leisurely.

_Alice-for-Short_ (1907) and _Somehow Good_ (1908) are strong novels,
but _Joseph Vance_, with its carelessly constructed plot and power to
awaken tears and smiles, remains De Morgan's best piece of fiction.

William John Locke was born in the Barbados in 1863. He gained much
of his reputation from his tenth book, _The Beloved Vagabond_ (1906).
The book takes its charm from the whimsical and quixotic temperament
of the hero. He is typical of Locke's other leading characters, who,
like Hamlet's friend, Horatio, take "fortune's buffets and rewards
with equal thanks." Like other novels by the same author, this story
is pervaded by a distinctly Bohemian atmosphere, wherein the ordinary
conventions of society are disregarded.

Locke's humor, his deft characterization, his toleration of human
failings, largely compensate for his lack of significant plots. He is
sometimes whimsical to the point of eccentricity, and his high spirits
often verge on extravagance; but at his best he has the power of
refreshing the reader with gentle irony, genial laughter, and love for
human kind.

Israel Zangwill, the Jewish writer, was born in London in 1864. He
first won fame by interpreting the Jewish temperament as he saw it
manifested in London's dingy, pitiful Ghetto quarter. "This Ghetto
London of ours," he says, "is a region where, amid uncleanness and
squalor, the rose of romance blows yet a little longer in the raw air
of English reality, a world of dreams as fantastic and poetic as the
mirage of the Orient where they were woven."

In his volume, _The Children of the Ghetto_ (1892), Zangwill admirably
chronicles the lives of these people and the sharp contrasts b