... By Ralph Straus READING Mr. Ralph Nevill is like being invited to luncheon at some famous club, and afterwards being pri vileged to listen to some enter taining chatter in the smoking- room. You sit there in the most comfortable chair ever built, and your cigar is good, and the old brandy is something very special indeed. And then Mr. Nevill, taking pity on your youth and ignorance and almost ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley A I5 Categories. There are few faculties I envy more than the power, which comes naturally to many, of seeing the common quality in things superficially unalike and of sifting them into appro priate categories. What a boon to the critic, to have a mind unappalled by diversity, copiously furnished with labels and pigeon holes, and looking on a land scape ...

... The Cinema By JAMES AGATE Prancing Niggers MORGAN EVANS, a Caerphilly collier, goes for a jaunt, and with his year's savings in his pocket, to the neighbouring city of Cardiff. There he falls for a siren in what it is polite to call a gaming-saloon, who induces him to play dice with her bully. Morgan loses all his money, starts creating, and in the disturbance accident ally kills his brother ...

... Our Of*005 Oc on FRENCH LEAVE The Vaudeville Theatre). THE revival, after ten years, of this cheerful comedy by Reginald Ber keley is not un welcome, since it pleasantly stimu lates throughout its three acts and only declines for a part of the middle act to the more worn-out antics of farce. The fact, however, that a fortnight back it formed one of no fewer than sixteen plays then running in ...

... . By L. P. Hartley A Seeing Pictures. Seeing pictures is the least exciting form of aesthetic eniovment. You see all the picture at once: the element of time is not involved in the experience: and so you feel no suspense, suspense which is just what makes a book or a piece of music exciting. Nobody says of a picture, I could not put it down, so anxious was i to find out how it ended, or Each ...

... Character I and I Act/on FANNIE HURST'S NOVEL SCREENED By j Lionel Collier Two very definite influences have been brought to the screen by the introduction of sound. The first is a restriction of action, and consequently of originality, and the second a very marked improvement in the casting of a play. That is not to say that great acting did not exist on the silent screen it did, and in the ...

... Where Woman a Side-show By Ralph Straus FOR the moment the Waugh family is very much in the limelight. After long years at his publisher's desk Arthur Waugh has retired to his study, to the regret of authors, but undoubtedly to the advantage of readers. For, like his cousin, the late Sir Edmund Gosse, Father Waugh-- if he will excuse the ecclesiastical term-- is, primarily, a true man of ...

... I . if 11 By J. T. Grein. -J I. 41 THE WHITE ASSEGAI, AT THE PLAYHOUSE. OUR general public cares, alas! so little for and knows less of the Crown lands and Dominions that Sir Barry Jackson and the author, Mr. Allan King, deserve our appreciation for initiating us into our ways of dealing with the tribes of south Africa and the mode of living of our colonists. At great length and in minuteness ...

... Qur Gpt,ou* Oc on WELCOME DANGER (The Carlton 7 heatri f GREAT is the doctrine of compensation. Only the other day sensitive people shuddered to hear that in putting before the public a film adaptation of a play by William Shakespeare, the picture-house pro prietors (or exhibitors or renters, or whatever name is given to those deep-throated, full-waisted gentlemen whose cars wait for them ...

... The spate of sequels, answers, imitations and other volumes stimu lated by the Remarque masterpiece seems, as yet, to show no signs of abatement Mr. JAMES LAVER makes his bow Introducing to our readers a new re viewer who takes for the theme of his first article briefly recommended Australia To-day, by Arthur J. Wilson. (Larby. 5s. net.) Which is an invaluable vade mecum to the traveller, ...

... A MALLET ON L.C.'s HEAD By Ralph Straus I HAVE sometimes wondered what it must be like to have a book written wholly and solely about oneself. Surely a queer enough business. The book, of course, might be little more than one long eulogy, in which case, I suppose, the subject would murmur (in public) Too kind! and feel (in private) that one man at any rate has got his deserts. But suppose ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley A Book by Any Other Name What makes a good title? And does its title have any effect on a book's popularity? Publishers will tell you yes, the title makes an enormous difference. If that be so, then one ought to be able to discover in titles the common quality that catches the popular fancy. To me, I own, this seems a hopeless task. Take the Elizabethan ...