f cheering for
the army on the outbreak of the Boer War. That is the kind of tales they
are, slight and momentary things, with no plot but plenty of atmosphere,
and in their style remarkably well done. Whether they would actually
keep the nerve-ridden oblivious of bombs for the thousand-and-one nights
that might have seen raids and didn't is a matter that need not concern
us. For my part, I liked as much as any the pages in which Miss HUNT or
Mr. HUEFFER folded up her or his manuscript and allowed the other
(whichever it was) to tell us about the very pleasant and human
audience. I had only one disappointment, but that was acute. I did want
just once for them to hear a distant bang, and see what happened. I
rather doubt whether the placid and literary charm of the tales would
have sufficed to keep them within doors had there been anything to see
outside.

* * * * *

"In his hot indignation his yellowish face had in places turned
blackish: literally, black streaks ran from the corners of his lips
upwards and downwards, and from the inner corners of his eyes." If you
read that sentence in a novel with Mr. EDGAR JEPSON'S name on the cover,
and found that the passage was a description of a man named _Shadrach
Penny_, would you not, as I did, settle down comfortably in your
armchair and wait with perfect confidence for the human zebra to murder
somebody in the most fascinatingly brutal manner? But he did not do
anything of the kind. I think that the fact that I was disappointed in,
and even seriously bored by, _The Man Who Came Back_ (HUTCHINSON) was
largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet
I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the
book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and
amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer
could have written it. Mr. JEPSON, like most other authors, has had the
idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the
original story closely in one respect, for _Roland Penny's_ first meal
in his old home consists of roast veal, but he departs from it in making
_Roland_, so far from wasting his substance, amass a large fortune among
the husks and swine. I do not know how to classify _The Man Who Came
Back_. It is not a novel of incident, for nothing happens in it. It is
not a novel of character, for there is no attempt at any but the crudest
cha