Finding Midas and Son (METHUEN) described on the wrapper as a tale of “the struggle of a young man and his immense riches,” I said to myself (rather like Triplet in the play) that here was a struggle at which it would greatly hearten me to assist.  As a fact, however, the conflict proved to be somewhat postponed; it took Mr. STEPHEN McKENNA more than two hundred pages to get the seconds out of the ring and leave his hero, Deryk, face to face with an income of something over a million a year.  Before this happened the youth had become engaged to a girl, been thrown over by her, experienced the wiles of Circe and gone in more or less vaguely for journalism.  Then came the income and the question what to do with it.  Of course he didn’t know how to use it to the best advantage; it is universal experience that other people never do.  But Deryk impressed me as more than commonly lacking in resource.  All he could think of was to finance and share in an archaeological venture (rather fun), and to purchase a Pall Mall club-house—­apparently the R.A.C.—­and do it up as a London abode for himself and his old furniture.  Also for his wife, as fortune had now flung him again into the arms of his early love.  But it is just here that the subtle and slightly cruel cleverness of Mr. McKENNA’s scheme becomes manifest.  The million-a-year had been at work on Deryk; it had slain his capacity for romance.  In plain words, he found that he cared more for his furniture than for his fiancee, whose adoration soon bored him to shrieking point.  So there you are.  I shall not betray the author’s solution of his own problem.  I don’t think he has proved his somewhat obvious point as to the peril of great possessions. Deryk was hardly a quite normal subject, and Idina (the girl) was a little fool who would have irritated a crossing-sweeper.  But what he certainly has done is to provide some scenes of pre-war London not unworthy to be companion pictures to those in Sonia; and this, I fancy, will be good enough for most readers.

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Its publishers call The Pot Boils (CONSTABLE) a “provocative” book, and certainly the title at least deserves this epithet.  But I decline to be drawn into the obvious retort.  Besides, with all its faults, the story exhibits an almost flaunting disregard of those qualities that make the best seller.  About the author I am prepared to wager, first, that “STORM JAMESON” is a disguise; secondly, that the personality behind it is feminine.  I have hinted that the tale is hardly likely to gain universal popularity; let me add that certain persons, notably very young Socialists and experts in Labour journalism, may find it of absorbing interest.  It is a young book, almost exclusively about young people, written (or I mistake) by a youthful hand.  These striplings and maidens are all poor, mostly vain, and without exception fulfilled of a