cessful mystery play, written by Mrs. Rinehart in
conjunction with Avery Hopwood, _The Bat_. Nor was this her first success
as a playwright for she collaborated with Mr. Hopwood in writing the farce
_Seven Days_. Shall I add that Mrs. Rinehart has lived part of her life in
haunted houses? I am under the impression that more than one of her
residences has been found to be suitably or unsuitably haunted. There was
that house at Bellport on Long Island--but I really don't know the story.
I do know that the family's experience has been such as to provide
material for one or more very good mystery novels. My own theory is that
Mrs. Rinehart's indubitable gift for the creation of mystery yarns has
been responsible for the facts. I imagine that the haunting of the houses
has been a projection into some physical plane of her busy
sub-consciousness. I mean, simply, that instead of materialising as a
story, her preoccupation induced a set of actual and surprising
circumstances. Why couldn't it? Let Sir Oliver Lodge or Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, the Society for Psychical Research, anybody who knows about that
sort of thing, explain!

Consider the stories about Letitia Carberry. Tish is without a literary
parallel. Well-to-do, excitement loving, with a passion for guiding the
lives of two other elderly maidens like herself; with a nephew who throws
up hopeless hands before her unpredictable performances, Tish is funny
beyond all description.

Just as diverting, in a quite different way, is Bab, the sub-deb and
forerunner of the present-day flapper.

Something like a historical romance is _Long Live the King!_--a story of a
small boy, Crown Prince of a Graustark kingdom, whose scrapes and
friendships and admiration of Abraham Lincoln are strikingly contrasted
with court intrigues and uncovered treason.

_The Amazing Interlude_ is the story of Sara Lee Kennedy, who went from a
Pennsylvania city to the Belgian front to make soup for the soldiers and
to fall in love with Henri.... But one could go on with other samples of
Mrs. Rinehart's abundant variety. I think, however, that the vitality of
her work, and not the variety nor the success in variety, is our point.
That vitality has its roots in a sympathetic feeling and a sanative humour
not exceeded in the equipment of any popular novelist writing in America
today.

BOOKS BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE
THE MAN IN LOWER TEN
WHEN A MAN MARRIES
THE WINDOW AT THE W