The piece was eked out by conventionally stupid characters, including one of those nasty old fathers that our sense of propriety will not tolerate; the usual “dashing” young actress, a French maid, and a skittish widow. The only type that amused was a flabby dude, and this was funny only because it was so well played by Mr. Lennox Pawle. Miss Ethel Irving herself, so charming in musical comedy, was heavy, stodgy and uninteresting. As a “star,” she was so lacking in all essentials that she reminded me of New York rather than of London. She recalled my favorite “rushlights,” and I didn’t cross the Atlantic to sample them anew. FOR BOOK LOVERS _Archibald Lowery Sessions_ [Illustration] The part played by “high life” in fiction. The significance of its popularity as a theme for new novels illustrated by recent books. “The Marriage of William Ashe,” “Belchamber,” “The Dark Lantern.” Other books. The twenty-five best selling books of the month There is at least one field in fiction that will probably never be exhausted; at any rate, not until the distinctions that have always divided human beings into classes become obliterated. High life has always possessed, as it does to-day, peculiar attractions both for the novel writer and the novel reader. Whatever may be the truth about the importance of the part played by the devotees of society from a purely utilitarian point of view, whatever may be said about their follies and extravagances and even immoralities, it still remains true that their doings and characters constitute a theme in fiction which is perennially active. Other “types” come and go as manners and methods change, just as, in recent years, we have seen the development of the “industrial” or “commercial” novel, but the society story still flourishes, as it always has. The Englishman is not the only one who dearly loves a lord. Though we have no nobility on this side of the water, there is no lack among us of interest in the class that in America supplies its place. The society columns in the daily newspapers furnish sufficient evidence of this, for it is not to be presumed that so much space would be devoted to a topic if there were not a widespread interest in it. What is done by the votaries of fashion is of little importance, so long as they do something. It may be that they shock sober-minded people and supply material for satirists. Their scandals, of which probably they have no more than their fair share, and their monkey dinners, may be offenses against propriety and good taste, but those who object still consume the news that comes from Fifth Avenue and Newport and Belgravia, whether it is told in newspapers or in the latest novel.