I do not venture to allege that there is a plot behind the scenes, between Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son and Mr. George Moore, for promoting the reading and the sale of Mr. Moore's new novel, Evelyn Tunes; but there might very well be, for the result is much the same. Smith and Son have nearly all the railway bookstalls in the country, and a very Sacs bookselling business besides, and one of the largest circulating libraries in the United Kingdom, and they refuse to supply the people with this novel. They do not tell anybody why, for they are absolutely silent on the subject; but everybody knows that Mr. George Moore is apt to treat of forbidden subjects in his stories. 'The author says nothing until he is chal-longed, and then he steps in very cool blood' into the arena and begins: to argue the question of the character of his work and the reasonableness of the position of Messrs. W. H. Smith and "Son, He makes no complaint on the score of his interests. He need not. All the world knows that the announcement of the fact that Smith and Son do not supply Evelyn Innes and the Sppenrance of letters in the papers on the subject by the author, and the consequent controversy and gossip, will give the book such a circulation as is beyond the enterprise of Messrs. Smith and Son to secure for any new work. But the particular public interest arises out of the author's self-defence in his curious plea that his story is moral and written with a very particular and definite and well considered moral purpose.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.