Mr. FREDERIC HARRISON writes:  “MATT.  ARNOLD once chaffed me for keeping a guillotine in my back-garden.  But my real colour was never sea-green in politics any more than it is yellow in literature or journalism.  Yet I have a great tenderness for the old yellow-backs of fifty years ago.  Yellow Books are another story.  The yellow-backs may have sometimes affronted the eye, but for the most part they were dove-like in their outlook.  Now ’red ruin and the breaking-up of laws’ flaunt themselves in the soberest livery.  I do not often drop into verse, but this inversion of the old order has suggested these lines, which you may care to print:—­

  “’In an age mid-Victorian and mellow,
    Ere the current of life ran askew,
  The backs of our novels were yellow,
    Their hearts were of Quaker-like hue;
  But now, when extravagant lovers
    Their hectic emotions parade,
  In sober or colourless covers
    We find them arrayed.’”

Mr. CHARLES GARVICE points out that the choice of colour in bindings calls for especial care and caution at the present time, owing to the powerful influence of association.  Yellow might lend impetus to the Yellow Peril.  Red is especially to be avoided owing to its unfortunate appropriation by Revolutionary propagandists.  Blue, though affected by statisticians and Government publishers, has a traditional connection with the expression of sentiments of an antinomian and heterodox character.  At all costs the sobriety and dignity of fiction should be maintained, and sparing use should be made of the brighter hues of the spectrum.  He had forgotten a good deal of his Latin, but there still lingered in his memory the old warning:  “O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori.”

Miss DAISY ASHFORD, another of our “best sellers,” demurs to the view that a gaudy or garish exterior is needed to catch the public eye.  The enlightened child-author scorned such devices.  Books, like men and women—­especially women—­ought not to be judged by their backs, but by their hearts.  She confessed, however, to a weakness for “jackets” as a form of attire peculiarly consecrated to youth.

Madame MONTESSORI cables from Rome as follows:—­“The colour of book-covers is of vital importance in education.  I wish to express my strong conviction that, where books for the young are concerned, no action should be taken by publishers without holding an unfettered plebiscite of all children under twelve.  Also that the polychromatic series of Fairy Stories edited by the late Mr. ANDREW LANG should be at once withdrawn from circulation, not only because of the reckless and unscientific colour scheme adopted, but to check the wholesale dissemination of futile fables concocted and invented by irresponsible adults of all ages and countries.”

* * * * *

SONGS OF THE HOME.

          III.—­THE GUEST.

  I have a friend; his name is John;
  He’s nothing much to dote upon,
    But, on the whole, a pleasant soul
  And, like myself, no paragon.