The Literary Sense
By E. NESBIT
Author of "The Red House," "The Would-Be-Goods," etc.
Cloth 12mo $1.50
This is a collection of very clever and original short stories, by an author whose work has attracted much favorable attention here and in England. The stories deal with lovers' meetings, partings, misunderstandings or reconciliations. They are little tragedies or little comedies, and sometimes both. The situations are strong and ingeniously conceived, and each tale has a turn or twist of its own. There is throughout a quiet vein of humor and a light touch even where the situation is strained. In a way the stories are held together, because most or all of them have a bearing on the idea which is set forth in the first story—the one that gives the book its title. In that story the girl loses her lover because, instead of acting simply and naturally, she tries to act as if she were in a book, to follow her "literary sense"; in other words, she has something of the same temperament that distinguished Mr. Barrie's "Sentimental Tommy." This idea appears and reappears in the other stories, notably in that called "Miss Eden's Baby," which in its way is a little masterpiece.