Moon Mountains (HURST AND BLACKETT) is a story which with the best will in the world I found it impossible to regard wholly seriously.  The greater part of the scene is laid in Darkest Africa, where the father of the hero, Peter (my hope that the Peter habit had blown over appears to have been premature), disappears at an early stage.  The subsequent course of events reminds me of the words of the musical-comedy poet, popular in my youth, who wrote, “It were better for you rather not to try and find your father, than to find him”—­well, certainly better than to find him as Peter found his.  Perhaps it would not be unfair to suppose that Miss MARGARET PETERSON had at this point her eye already firmly fixed upon her big situation.  Certainly the course of Peter is rather impatiently and spasmodically sketched till the moment when matters are sufficiently advanced to ship him also to Africa, in company with an elderly hunter of butterflies named Mellis.  Their adventures form the bulk of the tale (filled out with some chat about elephants, and a sufficiency of love-making on the part of Peter), and I suppose I need hardly tell you how one of them, poor Mellis, is immediately captured and brought before the terrible white king of the hidden lands, nor how this same monarch, a really dreadfully unpleasant person, turns out to be—­Precisely.  So there the tale is; little more incredible than, I dare say, most of its kind; and if you have no rooted objection to characters all of whom behave like persons who know they are in a book there is no reason why you should not find it at least passably entertaining.

* * * * *

Mr. F. BRETT YOUNG’S manner of presenting The Tragic Bride (SECKER) is not free from affectation, and this is the more irritating because his literary style is in itself admirably unpretentious.  But having recorded this complaint I gladly go on to declare that his tale of Gabrielle Hewish has both charm and distinction.  I protest my belief in Gabrielle both in her Irish and English homes, but my protest would have been superfluous if Mr. BRETT YOUNG had not almost super-taxed my powers of belief.  So also with Arthur Payne; he is a fascinating lad, and the battle between his mother and Gabrielle for possession of him was a royal struggle, fought without gloves yet very fairly.  All the same I caught myself doubting once or twice whether any boy could at the same time be so human and so inhuman.  It is to Mr. BRETT YOUNG’S credit that these doubts do not interfere with one’s enjoyment of his book, and the reason is that he is first and last and all the time an artist.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  New Clerk. “BEG PARDON, SIR, BUT THERE’S A GENTLEMAN OUTSIDE WHO SAYS THAT YOU’VE ROBBED HIM OF ALL HE HAD.”

Turf Accountant. “WELL, WHAT’S HIS NAME?  ASK HIM TO GIVE YOU HIS NAME.  HOW AM I TO DISTINGUISH HIM IF HE DOESN’T SEND HIS NAME IN?”]