meandering methods and this spinelessness of
characterisation; and it is distinctly disappointing to see her
content with the curate's egg standard.

* * * * *

It is time that some of our novelists put up a statue to NAPOLEON for
services rendered to the cause of fiction. In Miss MAY WYNNE'S A _Spy
for Napoleon_ (JARROLD) his misdeeds and those of his minions are made
to serve the purpose of emphasizing the loyalty of the heroine to her
lover. This lover was an Englishman of a type sufficiently familiar in
novels--cold and masterful, but, for some reason not apparent to me,
extremely attractive. As he seemed to be roaming about France with the
object of getting NAPOLEON out of the way by any means available, I am
not certain that he was playing the game, even when we remember that
the rules of it were lax enough at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. But we are not asked to weigh carefully the merits of
character. It is just a romance of incident, in which a hot pace is
set at the start and kept up to the finish. In short you get a good
run for your money, and that is all about it.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE THEORIST.]

* * * * *

From a review of a novel:--

"Joan is pretty, and Stewart Austen ... asks her to marry
him. Joan refuses indignantly on the ground that his views
and conduct are opposed to those which as a member of a
Suffrage Society she is pledged to eradicate."--_The
Saturday Westminster_.

Why the lady should resent her lover's endorsement of her own opinions
is just one of those things that no fellah (unless he is a reviewer)
can understand.

* * * * *

"Besides being Paul Von Hindenburg's second self, Ludendorff
is the transportation expert of the Central Powers. He was
ordered to go to the industrial cities along the Rhine and
the Rhone rivers."--_Evening Paper_.

It is a pity that the second part of this enterprise had for
geographical reasons to be abandoned, for we understand that Lyons
would have given him a particularly warm reception.

* * * * *

"The Canadian Club gave a luncheon to-day in honour of the
Canadian Highlanders, who have been a picturesque feature
of the British recruiting week in New York....

"An exciting incident occurred during the luncheon, when