'Tis an ill-wind which blows nobody good,
And one man's meat another's poison is.
What is disaster to one man or mood,
Is to another mood or man "good biz."
What to your dramatist means love's labour's lost,
Your would-be skater craves—"a perfect frost!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
By the publication of The Play Actress (S. R. Crockett) Mr. Fisher Unwin fully maintains the success attained by his Autonym Library. My Baronite is least attracted by the scenes which possibly pleased the author most—those in which he describes life in the purlieus of London theatres. Mr. Crockett is much more at home in Galloway, and with the people who sparsely populate it. The opening chapter, describing Sabbath day in the Kirk of the Hill is in his best style, as are others describing the Great Preacher's tender caring for his little grand-daughter. The Play Actress is just the sort of thing to buy at a bookstall on starting for a journey. It will be felt to be a matter of regret if the journey isn't quite long enough to finish it at a sitting.
In The Worst Woman in London ("and other stories," a subtitle craftily suppressed on the outside of the book by F. C. Philips) the author gives us a number of capital detached stories of a most irritating abruptness. Almost every one of these stories is a novel thrown away; that is, every story is in itself the germ of what might have been a good novel. They are little more than "jottings for plottings." Yet, to be read with a pipe or small cigar, they just suffice to wile away time and obviate conversation. They are dedicated to Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, who has on more than one occasion shown himself an adept at real good short stories—not merely as plots, but genuinely complete in themselves and full of humour—and from whom the Baron expects something more in the same line, or, rather, on the same lines.