... When R. G. Came to London. R. G. Knowles discovered London, by way of Liverpool, on the 8th of June, 1891; and London discovered him, by way of the Trocadero, on the 13th. In the bill also on that momentous date were, among others, George Beauchamp and Charles Chaplin, descriptive singer and father of Charlie Chaplin of film fame. R. G.'s number went up, and he walked on. His first few ...

... . THE PARISH PUMP forms the chief element of the second programme of the Horniman Season at the Duke of York's and is quite good fun, but by no means brilliant. It is fairly modern in sub ject, distinctly old-fashioned in treatment, yet lacking the neatness of workmanship to which we used to be accustomed. One can laugh a good deal at Jeremiah Chebs, self- made man of wealth, who grows ...

... The Crime Club. The Crime Club is an exceptional book: it is not often that a series of detective stories has as part-author a former Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard. Mr. Frank Froest is a man who knows, and, aided and abetted by another expert in criminology, Mr. George Dilnot, has turned out a most fascinating volume. Of the merits of the yarns ...

... ^Tp[NGS NE^V^AT Till; iTIIEyVTRE^ TWO plays in succession the action of which is supposed to pass in France, and each, in the matter of costume-- to say nothing of the pronunciation of foreign words-- curiously un-French! We ought to be able to do better than this. The Silver Crucifix, at the Prince of Wales's, on the whole, is above the average as melodrama. No doubt the people talked the ...

... . ALTHOUGH The Love Thief is called a Canadian play and has certain non-English aspects, in reality it is a complicated, inept melodrama of any country. But we did laugh-- not infrequently in the wrong place. There is a difficult story, and Mr. Cambridge, the author, like many other beginners-- it seems safe to assume him to be a beginner-- mystifies his audience, and consequently annoys it. ...

... . By Dolf Wyllarde. Fisher Unwin.) Harbour is one of those distant stations of Empire to which the novelist must always be peculiarly attracted. A man is more than a man against those barren backgrounds of desert and rock he is an Englishman There is also the luxurious state which surrounds even a poor Government official in such stations, the least of them valeted and butlered in the good ...

... Narcissus. By Viola Meynell. i Martin Seeker.) Reading Miss Meynell's story is like listening to a finely modulated voice telling so evenly and so clearly the heart of a matter. She has caught from her mother that exquisite something which has no need to ennoble the soul's encounters because it already sees them noble in essence. This tale of two brothers is abundant demonstration. Almost any ...

... Ten Degrees Backwards. By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. (Hodder and Stoughton.) There is a gulf of years fixed between seventeen and forty-two, but miracles do happen, and they happen in Mrs. Fowler's story. To begin with, when the cleverest specialist from town can do no more than leave an injured boy to pass as easily as possible, a tall man in a perfectly fitting frock-coat arrives to heal. ...

... The Kaleidoscope. By the Hon. Mrs. Dowdall. Duckworth Mrs. Dowdall's idea of a plumber's elopement with a well-to-do daughter of the middle-class house where he went to mend the taps, and his subsequent rise to an old Scotch baronetcy by several deaths, is good enough in itself for robust comedy, if not farce. Beyond that idea there is no con struction in The Kaleidoscope but Mrs. Dowdall's ...

... Making Money.' By Owen Johnson. {Martin Seeker.) If it is safe to judge by external signs, the author of Making Money comes from the land where money is made in the largest and most sensational quantities, and has devoted his description of Wall Street finance to the sacred cause of what is called in America uplift. Four students meet when they are about to enter upon the task of earning ...

... . By William J. Locke. Bodley Head.) Thinner and still more thin grow the webs of Mr. Locke's spinning. is very thin indeed. The fantasy spreads, the sentimentality thickens, till faith grows feeble in the truth of his yarn and concern languishes for the matter of it. Too much has been asked of that easy pervasive charm that sent the reviewers to write glowing reviews of Aristide Pujol, ...

... The Created Legend. By Feodor Sologub. {Martin Seeker.) The proverb that Truth is stranger than fiction argues a poor invention. To the average Englishman nothing will be stranger than the truth about Russia which Sologub drops in the course of his present story than the fiction about the murder committed by his hero. Not that it was actual murder. The intense and imaginative poet had to kill ...