A few years ago Wyndham Martyn's first book, "The Man Outside," was one of the "best sellers" of its season. His new novel shows a distinct advance in the art of the story-teller, and will make many new friends for its author. Richard Chester, a young American of family, with a care-free disposition and a dashing outlook on life, goes through all his money, and has the choice of appealing to his older brother for assistance or working to avoid starvation.
Choosing the latter alternative, and the odds against him, he pursues his unfaltering way through many trials and vicissitudes, not afraid to try labor of the meanest sort; and throughout his struggle for existence his hopes are sustained through love of a true-hearted woman. No man fights more gallantly than he for what is dear to him; neither hardship nor ill-success has power to stay his impetuous course.
The reader must learn for himself the place that a curious will and a chance meeting have in the unusual plot, and the reader may be sure of finding in "All the World to Nothing" a story of charm and cheeriness and unusual appeal.
By the author of "The Haunted Pajamas"
THE GIFT OF ABOU HASSAN
By FRANCIS PERRY ELLIOTT
Illustrated by Hanson Booth.
This is absolutely the cleverest, catchiest book of the season, the Arabian Nights up-to-date in modern New York, a rapid, rollicking romance of love and laughter, fun and absurdity, all told in the most delightfully whimsical manner imaginable. A young club-man, whose distinguishing characteristic is the possession of unblushing audacity and nerve, sees a pretty girl outside the antique-shop of a Persian dealer, to which the girl's aunt has come in quest of a wonderful rug—and then the fun begins and never stops.
For Abou Hassan's shop holds a rug more wonderful than the world has known in many centuries: a magic rug—put foot upon it and one can't be seen or heard. And the hero's love-making, his masquerade as another man, the complications for which the magic rug is responsible, these make a steady stream of comedy that brings laughter to your lips and tears to your eyes while you are held entranced by the mirthful medley of mysterious events that follow.