OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Hard Luck, by Arthur à Beckett, begins a trifle slow, but works up to an exciting climax, of which the secret is so profoundly kept, up till the very last moment, that not the most experienced in sensational plots would discover it. Capitally managed. It is one of the Arrowsmith Series, and a genuinely artistic shilling shocker.
A Black Business. By Hawley Smart. Uncommonly smart of him bringing it out just at this time, when the talk everywhere is about the Slave Trade, the struggle for Colonial life, Stanley, and the Very Darkest Africa. There's Black Business enough about. Smart chap Hawley.
The only thing I've to say against the Remarks of Bill Nye, in one volume, says the Baron, is the size of the book, which is as big as a family Bible. Nowadays, when busy men can only snatch a few seconds en route, the handy volume is the only really practicable form of literature. I'd rather have three small pocketable volumes of Bill Nye's essays and stories than this one cumbersome work, which, once on the shelf, runs a pretty good chance of being left there. The majority of Bill Nye's sayings are very amusing, and one of his short papers shows that the humorist can be pathetic on occasion without falling into mock sentiment. It is published by Neely, of New York, and, if reduced in bulk, the Remarks of Bill Nye ought to do very well here, even among those who, for want of familiarity with American slang, do not keenly appreciate American humour. The Baron does appreciate it when it is genuine American humour, but when the peculiar style is only copied by a journalistic 'arry, with whom the stupidest and most vulgar Yankeeisms pass for the highest wit, simply because they are Yankeeisms, then for this sort of imitation the Baron has no criticism sufficiently severe.
Baron de Book-Worms.