Mr. Arnold Palmer derives the title of My Profitable Friends (Selwyn and Blount) from a verse, new to me, in which the poet, apparently when launching her wares, concludes,
"But who has pain has songs to sell;
My Profitable Friends, farewell!"
which I take to be the pleasantest way in the world of calling them pot-boilers. But whether they were so intended or not, there can be no question of the very agreeable dexterity that Mr. Palmer brings to the composition of his tales. Save for a few experiments (which I should call the least successful in the collection) his formula is not the episodical "slice of life," with crumbly edges. His choice is for the well-made, with usually some ingenious little twist at the finish, and (so to speak) a neatly tied bow to end all. As an instance of this kind I commend to your notice the admirably shaped little yarn called "Two-penn'orth." Mr. Palmer has a pretty wit (perhaps here and there a trifle thin), shown nowhere to better advantage than in "A Picked Eleven," one of the most entertaining, and at the same time human, short stories that I have ever read. Further, his tales are essentially of the friendly order, and the public will be in fault if they do not also prove profitable, since we have none too many writers capable of getting such deft results with the same economy of means.
In most stories constructed on the Enoch Arden principle one of the husbands or wives (whichever it may be of whom there are too many) is usually a very nasty person. Miss Sophie Cole, in The Cypress Tree (Mills and Boon), makes all three of her entangled characters quite attractive; in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss Cole's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have been when you consider that they were both Miss Cole's characters. A very little of the occult will excuse a good deal of improbability, and the small amount that has crept into The Cypress Tree does not spoil the effect of a truly "nice" tale.
As an admirer of the Spud Tamson books it irks me to have to say that Winnie McLeod (Hutchinson) contains too much solid sermon to appeal to me. I gather that R. W. Campbell wants to show how dangerous life may be for a poor and beautiful girl, and as a warning Winnie can be confidently recommended. But sound and wholesome as the preaching is it seems to me more suitable for a tract than for a novel. Moreover it is not easy to feel full sympathy with a hero who is frankly called an Adonis, who "played a good bat at cricket," and also in a strenuous rugger match "dropped a beauty through the Edinburgh sticks." Altogether the picture suffers from the prodigious amount of paint that has been spent on it; yet I am confident it will afford edification to many people whose tastes I respect but cannot share.