ier.
It is now published in its complete form as originally written, and
although it is as long as a short novel, it has an essential unity of
incident which justifies us in claiming it as a short story. I suppose
that Algernon Blackwood is the only other English writer who has the
same gift for making strange spiritual adventures completely real to the
imagination, and the author of "The Bowmen" has surpassed even that fine
story in this description of how a mysterious terror overran England
during the last years of the great war and how the mystery of its
passing was finally revealed. The emotional tension of the reader is
enhanced by the quiet matter-of-fact air with which the story is
presented. The volume is one of the best five or six books of short
stories which England has produced during the past year.

THE SECOND ODD NUMBER: THIRTEEN TALES, by _Guy de Maupassant_, the
translation by _Charles Henry White_, an Introduction by _William Dean
Howells_ (Harper & Brothers). It is reported in some volume of French
literary memoirs that Guy de Maupassant regarded the first series of
"The Odd Number" as better than the original. Be this as it may, the
thirteen stories which make up this volume are admirably rendered with a
careful reflection of the slightest nuances. As Mr. Howells states in
his introduction to the volume: "The range of these stories is not very
great; the effect they make is greater than the range." But this
selection has been admirably chosen with a view to making the range as
wide as possible, and I can only hope that it will serve to influence
some of our younger writers toward a greater descriptive and emotional
economy.

THE GIRL AND THE FAUN by _Eden Phillpotts_ (J. B. Lippincott Co.). These
eight idylls of the four seasons are graceful Greek legends told with a
modern touch in poetic prose. They have a quality of quiet beauty which
will commend them to many readers to whom the more realistic work of Mr.
Phillpotts does not appeal, and the admirable illustrations by Frank
Brangwyn are a felicitous accompaniment to the modulated prose of Mr.
Phillpotts.

BARBED WIRE AND OTHER POEMS by _Edwin Ford Piper_ (The Midland Press,
Moorhead, Minn.). As Grant Showerman's "A Country Chronicle" is an
admirable rendering of the farm life of Wisconsin in the seventies, so
these poems are a fine imaginative record of the pioneer life of
Nebraska a little later. I believe this volume to contain quite as fine