Trirtes anp_ Trivets.—By Arthur Keyser. John Murray.
London, Everyone who read "People and Places," reviewed in these columns some months ago will turn with pleasure to Mr. Keyser's new volume of miniscences and those who know him not. already should take this opportunity of making his acquaintance. It is a cammonplace that there is a special charm about books dealing with the years before the war, but it is profoundly true, especially when they can go back to those before the South Africam War. Doubtless we had our troubles then as now (the present writer can just recollect the appalling gloom cast over the parental breakfast table by the news that Gladstone's Home Rule Bill had passed the House of Commons). Yet in retrospect those years seem so incredibly golden and spacious that it is difficult to believe they ever really existed. Like Barkis on the memorable ride with Peggotty, Mr. Keyser strikes one as having been "pretty jolly" all his life, but he appears to look back on the seventies and eighties with special fondness. He must indeed have had a rattling good time as a boy.
It's delightful to breathe the air Breathed by people in Grosvenor Square, —carolled Connie Ediss. 'And no atmosphere less refined offend-has been in London. He makes; ec' his nostrils then. There is al deliciously unconscious touch which we cannot help, quoting. Mr. Keyser has been describing a very popular couple in Berkhausted, the husband a brewer, and he concludes:
In later years, I (as told, the Smiths left the town and were merged in the ''County." Such a genial couple would be welcome anywhere, The italics are ours. But the sentiment rings true of the timd described. To set against his brilliant ability at lawn tennis, Mr. Keyser gambled atrociously in his youth and tells appalling tales of sums then lost and won. On one occasion he played ecarte straight through a night, a day and a night with a colonial Premier. After which it is surprising to read that he "never ventured to play poker." Of the many good stories told we particularly like the one about the lady who, being asked to take her hat off at a matinee, refused because she had washed her hair the night before and "it would be all over the place." Presently it was her turn to complain of the gentleman behind her' fidgetting. 'I'm very sorry," he said, "I washed my feet last night and now I simply can't do anything with them." There is something very appealing also about the lady, a friend of Mr. Keyser's, who had been to visit young man, ill in a London hotel and supposed to be very: sad and solitary. When she saw Mr. Keyser afterwards she said:'
I doubt if he is as lonely, and, neglected as you think, for when I culled just now, he was reading in "bed and, without looking up, held out his band, saying, "You dear Jittie thing, how good of you to come!"
Later in life, as readers of "People and Places' will remember, the author became a magistrate in the Malay States, and subsequently was for a number of year's first Consul, then Consul-General in Cadiz and Seville, though this was by no means thd Timit of his travels. These pages are all fascinating and having! read his account of Spain one longs to go there. Mr. Keyser's chapter on bull-fighting strikes a novel note, as he writes of it with-.a judicial detachment very, unusual. But one sympathizes none the less with the English girl taken to a bull fight for the afternoon As soon as the first poor horse had been torn asunder, she rose from her seat, burst into tears, forced her way through the crowd, hitting each amazed spectator who impeded her progress in the face with her fists, exclaiming You beasts! You cowards! You brutes." This Being said in a language they did not understand added additional mystery to the haste of her exit.
The greater part, however, by far of the pictures of Spain, her
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.