We had, at one time, quite a "boom" in the short stories of "O. Henry," the American writer whose own life story wag so tragic. London booksellers say that the demand for his books has now greatly fallen away, and the same thing seems to have happened in America. One wonders how this is, for "O. Henry' had @ great salutation as a master of the short story. Perhaps one reason may be that some American authorities on if say he "worked without truth, without moral consciousness, and without a philoso-
short story writer of the first phy of life": in fine, wag nog a order.
"Robert R. Lee," the new play by Mr. John Drinkwater, has just been published by Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson, and was produced at the Regent Theatre a few days after publication. ye The life of the great jockey, Fred Archer, hag been written by Mr. E. M. Humpbris, with in-traductions by Lord Arthur Grosvenor and Mr. Arthur. B. Portman. Material has been supplied by the jockey's relatives and the late "Nat Gould." ye A memoir of Father Bernard Vaughan is in preparation by the Rev. C. C. Martindale for publication in the autumn. The writer will dwell on the warmheartedness, simplicity, and humility of Father Vaughan and of the perminence of this work in East London. The publishers will be Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Company, who have in the press a new abridged edition of_ the li fe of Alfred Lyttelton, by Edith Lyttelton.
The other week Mr. Joseph Conrad, ''thinking long" for a taste of the sea, boarded the Tuscanian of his friend, Captain David Bone, also an author, and went to America. For all his own sailings, before the mast and on the bridge, in his earlier days he had never been to the Great Republic. He has had a very good time there, for Americans know how to be hospitable especially to a man of genius. Mr. Conrad's appreciation of- this will take the form of not trying to write a book on America, and indeed he still has to finish his novel about the Napoleonic times.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.