It is of a life of success but not of easy success that Miss Hughes tells. Certainly her own life has been one of hard work. Though her success has owed much to her father's reputation, she has never taken things easily. Edward Hughes achieved a position and reputation as a portrait painter which would be—probably—1m-possible in this generation. And when his daughter _adoviel the rictession of portrait photography she had her clientele ready made to her hand. Shot had, needless to say, many difficulties put in her way by the attitude of the society: of her earlier day to a woman's practising a_ profession at all:, Even her father himself, who was. quite content to let her reproduce his portraits with her camera for the purposes of his records and the promotion of his fame, objected at first to her becoming a professional portrait photograph. her. In those days ladies did not do such things. It was with some difficulty that her argument that if he painted portraits for money there should be no objection to her photographing them for money prevailed over his prejudices.
It is encouraging to those of us who like short stories to find that English publishers are issuing them more and more. There was a day whan a publisher's "reader" dare not. recommend a. volume of "short stories to his master, because he would surely be told, "No good; women won't read them." They may be learning to do so, or at all events they are getting greater opportunities, and selections of short stories are now coming along. Under the title "Thirty and One Stories" Mr. Thornton Butterworth will at once publish a volume which has tales by some of our best-known writers. as A popular book in the Paris bookshops just now is "La Chine," by M. Emile Hovelaque. It has been translated-into English, and will be published here during the If such prejudices make us Smile to-day it is because, in the rapid advance of commercialism through all ranks of society, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that it was within the experience of Edward Hughes that portrait painting itself was not quite respectable. One incident of his life showed him that it was pre-Sumption for a mere portrait Painter to aspire to the hand of county lady. And Edward Hughes only died in 1908. But it was not many years before his time that the- surgeon and the barber. were one and the same Person, who took his meals in the servants' hall when he was called to the mansion.
One of the principal charms of a book of this kind is the recollection of the standards of the people who have gone before us. It is interesting to us to see the 4
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.