The Equinox (Volume I, Number V)

THE BIG STICK Heinesque moods are steeled through with a strong man’s virility.” In short, Dr Pangloss was indeed the greatest of philosophers—until Gérard Harvey wiped the floor with him. Α. L, THE LIMIT. By ADA LEVERSON. 6:. Mrs Leverson is easily the daintiest and wittiest of our younger feminine writers; but she does well to call her latest masterpiece “the limit,” Mrs Leverson offers us a picture of an aged, wrinkled, and bedizened Jewess with false hair and teeth, painted and whitewashed with kohl, rouge, and chalk, until there seems hardly any woman there at all. Yet not content with addiction to indiscriminate adultery and morphine, she finds pleasure in seducing young men and picking their pockets. Fie ! you can surely show us a prettier picture than that. Why not return to your earlier manner? Not necessarily the manner of “An Idyll in Blooms. bury," but you might advantageously find material in Brixton or in Bayswater. FELIX. THE SOUL OF THE MOOR. William Rider & Son. 2:. net. “Success meant life! Failurewworse than death, for there would be the everlasting self-reproach ! Dare I attempt the experiment ? " This sounds familiar, but, if memory serves me right, Mr Dion Clayton Calthorpe’s drama continues in this strain,—“ He carefully surveyed his ashen face in the tiny glass suspended over his washhand stand, then, with hasty, trembling fingers, he dipped his leaky shaving-brush into the icy water, and proceeded, at the ghastly hour of 6 am, To SHAVE ! ” Perhaps the {act that “ My wife was very ill " accounts for the variation Mr Stratford D. Jolly is much too busy a man to devote much time to the “Serious study ofthe occult,” and it is a pity he should have spent so much time upon the forty-five chapters which comprise this work, instead of upon some other subjects with which he might be more conversant, In short, it is a flabby, gentlemanly book, which should find a ready sale among the more “ goody " portion of Suburbia, the only place where the Hero could be appreciated 1 Despite the author‘s obvious endeavour, there is absolutely nothing immoral in this book, and I can recommend it to great-grandchildren as a suitable Christ- mas present ior their grandmother’s aunt. My congratulations to the illustrator for so thoroughly seizing the spirit of the book. BUNCO 169