“Kathleen” is about an Oxford undergraduate prank.  Members of a literary club, The Scorpions, agree to write a serial story on shares.  They invent a tale around certain names in an accidentally found letter signed “Kathleen.”  Their romantic fervor soon takes them off together in search of the real author of the letter.  One suspects that Mr. Morley, as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, might have been up to just such pranks.  Anyway, consider this dedication:  “TO THE REAL KATHLEEN—­With Apologies.”  His comedy is as interesting as his essays, its humor pointed by the rapid flow of action.

Kathleen, $1.25