(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics.)

Tents of a Night (Smith, Elder) is a quite ordinary story, about entirely commonplace persons, which has however an original twist in it. I never met a story that conveyed so vividly the nastiness of a summer holiday that isn't nice. The holiday was in Brittany, just the common round, Cherbourg, Coutances, Mont St. Michel, and the rest of it; and the holiday-makers were Mr. and Mrs. Hepburn, their niece Anne, and a rather pleasant flapper named Barbara whom they had taken in charge. Anne is the heroine and central character of the holiday; and certainly whatever discomforts it contained she seems to have done her successful best to add to. "This is a beastly place!" was her written comment upon St. Michel; and it was typical of her attitude throughout. Of course the real trouble with Anne was something deeper than drains or crowded hotels or the smell of too many omelettes: she was in love. Apparently she was more or less in love with two men, Dragotin Voinovich (whose name was a constant worry to Anne's aunt, and I am bound to say that I share her feelings about it) and Jimmy Fordyce, a pleasant young Englishman who pulls the girls out of quicksands and makes himself generally agreeable. In the end, however—but on second thoughts the end, emotionally speaking, of Anne is just what I shall not tell you, as it is precisely the thing that redeems the book from being commonplace. This you will enjoy; and also those remarkably real descriptions of various plage-hotels in August, the noise, the crowds, the long hot meals, the sunshine and constant wind, the sand on the staircase, and the general atmosphere of wet bathing-gowns—all these are a luxurious delight to read about in a comfortable English room. Miss Mary Findlater evidently knows them.

Dippers who have given a new meaning to the classical motto, Respice finem, are so common amongst novel readers that Patricia Wentworth will only have herself to thank if many who are unfamiliar with her work fail to do justice to a book nine-tenths of which is thoroughly interesting and excellently well-written. As a boy, the hero of Simon Heriot (Melrose) is misunderstood, and although Mr. Martin, his step-father, is a somewhat stagey specimen of the heavy and vulgar papa, the child's emotions (as, for instance, when he pretends that the storm of his parent's wrath is the ordeal of the Inquisition or some far-away battle of paladins in which he is contending) are finely conceived, and many of the later passages in Simon's life—his unhappy love affair with Maud Courtney, his relations with his grandmother and with William Forster, the schoolmaster—are quite engrossing and give occasion for memorable sketches of character. It is when the natural end of the story is reached, and Simon has come into his own and has just been wedded to his proper affinity, that the structure seems to me to fall with a crash. I might perhaps, though not without reluctance, have pardoned an impertinent railway accident which leaves the young man apparently crippled for life, but the last chapters, in which he finds spiritual comfort and (after the doctors have given up hope) complete anatomical readjustment through the ministrations of faith healing, alienated me entirely. From the outset the obvious scheme of the novel is to bring the hero back happily to the home and, if you will, the rustic church of his ancestors; and, though the science of Christian healing may do all that its adherents claim for it, it has about as much to do with the case of Simon Heriot as the dancing dervishes or the rites of Voodoo.

Demetra Vaka has melted my literary heart. By way of homage to her I eat the dust and recant all the hard and bitter things I said and thought in my youth concerning Ancient Greece; especially I apologise, on behalf of myself and my pedagogues, for after regarding its language as a dead one. A Child of the Orient (Lane) has taught me better, though the last object the author appears to have in view is to educate. This "Greek girl brought up in a Turkish household" writes to amuse, entertain and charm, and her success is abundant. Whether it is attributable to the romantic particulars of the Turkish household or to the ingenuous personality of the Greek girl, I hesitate to say, since both are so captivating; but this I know, that, considered as descriptive sketches or personal episodes, each of the twenty-two chapters is a separate delight. For the ready writer material is not wanting in the Near East; a fine theme is provided in the national ambition of the Greek, who cannot forget his glorious past and be content with his less conspicuous present. As for the love interest, who should supply this better than the Turk? In these days of cosmopolitanism there are bound to be romantic complications in the lives of a polygamous people situate in a monogamous continent. By way of postscript the authoress travels abroad and deals with alien matters; her impression, I gather, is that if her ancestors of classical times could see our world of to-day and express an opinion upon it the best of their praise would be reserved for the fact of the British Empire, and the worst of their abuse be spent upon what is known as American humour. I am so constituted that I cannot but be prejudiced in favour of a writer gifted with so profound a judgment.

The creatrix of Pam must look to her laurels. Slovenliness is the aptest word to apply to the workmanship of Maria (Hutchinson), the latest heroine of the Baroness Von Hutten. Maria has the air of having been contracted for, while that fastidious overseer who lurks at the elbow of every honest craftsman, condemning this or that phrase, readjusting the other faulty piece of construction, has frankly abandoned the contractor. Maria was the daughter of an artist cadger (name of Drello), friend of the great and seller of their autograph letters, whereby he was astute enough to make a comfortable living. Maria had a dull brother named Laertes, who accidentally met a highness, who fell very abruptly in love with Maria and made her strictly dishonourable proposals. Maria drew herself up, compelled him to apologise and go away, until the nineteenth chapter, when she made similar proposals to the highness, now a duly and unhappily married King of Sarmania. But she is saved by the chivalrous love-lorn dwarf, Tomsk, who, with the irascible singing-master Sulzer, is responsible for the chief elements of vitality in this rather suburban romance. And I found myself never believing in Maria's wondrous beauty and quite sharing Sulzer's poor opinion of her singing. But this of course was mere prejudice.

In Grizel Married (Mills and Boon) Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey exhibits the highest-handed method of treating Romance that ever I met. For consider the situation to be resolved. Dane Peignton was engaged to Teresa, but in love with Lady Cassandra Raynor, whose husband, I regret to add, was still alive. Dane and Cassandra had never told their love, and concealment might have continued to prey on their damask cheeks, if Mrs. Vaizey had not (very naturally), wished to give us a big emotional scene of avowal. It is the way in which this is done that compels my homage. Off go the characters on a picnic, obviously big with fate. Teresa goes, and Dane and Cassandra, the fourth being Grizel, whom you may recall pleasantly from an earlier book; but, though she fills the title rÔle in this one, she has little to do with its development. Of course I saw that something tragic was going to happen to somebody on that picnic—cliffs or tides or mad bulls or something. But I don't suppose that in twenty guesses you could get at the actual instrument of destiny. Cassandra chokes over a fish-bone! That's what I meant about Mrs. Vaizey's courage. And the reward of it is that, after your first moment of incredulity, the fish-bone isn't in the least bit absurd. Poor Cassandra comes quite near to expiring of it; and Dane, having thumped and battered her into safety, sobs out his wild and whirling passion, while Grizel and poor Teresa have just to sit about and listen. It really is rather a striking and original climax; incidentally it is far the best scene in an otherwise not very brilliant tale. But, having attended that picnic, I shall be astonished if you don't, want to go on to the end and see how it all straightens out.