* * * * *

When a warm-hearted and law-abiding gentleman, who has kept open-house for many guests, suddenly discovers that these guests have plotted against him, have read his private correspondence, have caused explosions in his garden, have attacked his neighbours from the vantage-ground of his house, and altogether have behaved as if he didn’t exist, he is not unlikely to be both shocked and angry, and to denounce to the world the crew of traitors and assassins who have imposed on his kindness and hospitality.  This is what happened to Uncle Sam at the hands of the German conspirators for whom he had unconsciously provided a base of operations.  A full account of the doings of this poisonous gang is given in The German Spy in America (HUTCHINSON), by JOHN PRICE JONES, a member of the staff of the New York Sun.  It is not easy for anyone, least of all for a good American, to refrain from indignation at the baseness of the rogues who thus battened for many months on the United States and their people.  The book is soberly and clearly written, and is commended by Mr. ROOSEVELT in a Foreword, to which are added another Foreword by the Author, and an Introduction by Mr. ROGER B. WOOD, formerly U.S.  Assistant-Attorney in New York.

* * * * *

With whatever sharpness of criticism I had approached Ma’am (HUTCHINSON), the edge of it would have been turned by the statement upon the fly-leaf that the author, M. BERESFORD RYLEY, died while the novel was still in manuscript, and that it has been revised for the press by her friend, Mr. E.V.  LUCAS.  As things are, having before me only the pleasant task of praise, I am the more sorry that I cannot increase that pleasure by telling the writer how much I have enjoyed a wholly admirable story.  She had above everything the rare art of writing about homely and familiar matters unboringly. Ma’am (a not too happy title) begins in a dull parish, where its heroine is the newly-wedded wife of the curate.  You will have read no more than the opening pages (descriptive of the terrible Sunday evening supper which the pair took at the Vicarage—­a supper of cold meat and a ground-rice mould, whereat four jaded and parish-worn persons lacerated one another’s nerves) before you will have realised gratefully that the story and its characters are going to be alive with a very refreshing and unpuppetlike vitality.  Eventually, of course, more happens than Vicarage suppers.  An old lover of Griselda (Mrs. Curate) turns up, and many most unparochial events follow upon his arrival.  The scene shifts to Naples, and we meet a villaful of men and women, all of them admirably original and human.  Not for a great while have I read a story so unforced and appealing.  It is indeed a sad thought that this graceful pen will give us nothing more of its quality.

* * * * *