things for which I have a special affection. One is an old
friend who has often persuaded me that this world is rather a place for
smiles than for gloom; and the other is a new book of stories which have
life in them, which make their effect with a seemingly artless certainty
and leave the pleased reader with the impression that they are, if
anything, a shade or so too short. Both these things I have obtained in
_One Kind and Another_ (SECKER), by Mr. BARRY PAIN. "The Journal of Aura
Lovel," with which Mr. PAIN leads off, is a delightful performance. It
has freshness and charm and its sentiment seems to me to be exactly
right--the sentiment of an eager and attractive young girl relating the
feelings of her heart in the tenderest and prettiest style as far
removed from preciosity as it is from a silly simplicity. All the
stories have the essential merits of brightness and lightness, and most
of them have that peculiar kind of ingenuity which is one of Mr. PAIN's
strong points. Suddenly they land you at a point which is nowhere near
to that to which you thought you were travelling. The characters, even
when they are engaged in paradoxical and preposterous actions, are real
men and women, such as you could meet almost anywhere in a day's walk,
and they are set off with Mr. PAIN's fancy so as to become additionally
lifelike. Many things have struck me in the reading of this book. One is
that Mr. PAIN's new novel is overdue. Another is that he has an uncanny
familiarity with the ways of solicitors. "There is," he says, "no
historical instance of a solicitor after the age of forty having made
any change whatever in the manner of his clothing."

* * * * *

I will confess that it took a little time--say four chapters or so--for
the peculiar charm of _Simple Simon_ (LANE) to take hold upon me. It is
not, I quite honestly think, that I object to being laughed at. Goodness
knows we ordinary folk get enough of that nowadays at the hands of these
clever young satiricals; and most of us have enough common honesty to
appreciate our tormentors. It is that, just for a time, I was troubled
with a genuine doubt whether Mr. A. NEIL LYONS was not becoming too
satirical to be sincere, and allowing his gift for facetiousness to
betray him. The device of inventing a simple-minded young enthusiast,
and making him ask perpetual questions to the undoing of all those who
accept blindly the beliefs which Mr. LYONS is