ry of finance, and Marriage, a study of modern
conditions of love and society.

His earlier work is marked by wild imagination; his later by swift
analysis and warm sympathy. Compare the realistic description of village
life in Part I. of Tono Bungay with that of the Five Towns in Arnold
Bennett's Old Wives' Tale, mentioned later. Note Wells's socialistic
leanings.

Read from The War of the Worlds and Marriage. Contrast the two styles;
discuss the character of Marjorie in the latter; is she a possible
woman?

IX--WILLIAM J. LOCKE

William J. Locke, born of English parents in Barbadoes in 1803, was
educated at Cambridge, where he took the highest honors in mathematics.
He became a teacher, and it was only after years of hated drudgery that
he obtained a secretary's position and leisure to write. For long his
novels were little known, though At the Gate of Samaria, The Derelicts,
Idols, and The White Dove were all full of interest and promise. Then
with The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, called his greatest book, and The
Beloved Vagabond, his most popular, he suddenly became famous. Septimus,
Simon the Jester and The Glory of Clementina have followed one another
rapidly, and Septimus has been dramatized.

Locke's style is so easy as to conceal its art. His plots are lightly
constructed and many of his novels have unexpected endings. His men are
much alike, but so delightful that no one would have them altered. Each
has a certain chivalry, an ability to endure hardships, a lack of
practical judgment, but a simple goodness that is irresistible. Their
humor is charming, and their gentle philosophy convincing. Locke holds
the theory that life should be accepted cheerfully; this is his dominant
theme.

Clubs should read the amusing diatribe against teaching, and especially
against teaching mathematics, in Marcus. Read also the first and last
chapters of the Vagabond and Clementina. Compare his women and his men.

X--ARNOLD BENNETT

Arnold Bennett, in many ways the most talked-of English author living,
was born in Staffordshire in 1867 in a district known as "The
Potteries," or "The Five Towns." Here are furnaces, collieries,
manufactories and a people whose interests are made narrow and
provincial by the restricted boundaries of their lives.

Bennett went to London, became a journalist, an essayist, an editor, a
novelist, and a playwright. He lived for a time in Paris and traveled
extensively, and he has made use of