LIFE'S LITTLE ANOMALIES.
How many thousands of pounds have been offered to Carpenter and Dempsey to fight, and now here is a kind old lady giving two boys sixpence each if they'll promise not to.
I doubt whether the complications which attend the devolution of dead men's property were created for the confusion of survivors or for the convenience of novelists. In the case of The Lost Mr. Linthwaite (Hodder and Stoughton), Mrs. Byfield had married Mr. Byfield, or at least she thought she had, and Mr. Byfield had died, supposedly intestate. Previously Mrs. Byfield had married Mr. Melsome, or again she thought she had, and Mr. Melsome had disappeared and was assumed to be dead, leaving nothing behind him except a brother as vile as himself. The following discoveries were made by her in due sequence: That Mr. Melsome was not dead and that therefore she was not Mrs. Byfield but Mrs. Melsome; that Mr. Melsome was already married when he purported to marry her, and that therefore she was not Mrs. Melsome but Mrs. Byfield; and that a solicitor's clerk was absconding with the bulk of the Byfield estate, which, of course, was what the bother was all about. Her son, bitten with the craze for discoveries, then discovered on his own that the late Mr. Byfield hadn't died intestate. I wonder myself if he ever really died at all.... These are what Mr. J. S. Fletcher very aptly calls the mere legalities; the plot, which thickens and thickens from first page to last, concerns the handling of them by the evil but talented Melsome brothers, the accidental intervention of Mr. Linthwaite, and the rescue work of his admirable nephew, Mr. Richard Brixey, of The Morning Sentinel. Mr. Fletcher tells his story well, but up to the very last moment I was looking and hoping for a surprise and was suspecting those legalities of being a deception invented to make the surprise all the greater. A first-class adventure, in my opinion spoilt by the sacrifice of originality to technicality.
"The girls, to the number of 116, escaped in their night attire, and displayed great coolness."—News of the World.
Very natural.
"Baron Evence Coppee, a Belgian, has been arrested on the charge of furnishing coal to the enemy during the war."—Daily Paper.