Tom Mott, a clever literateur of New York, is ordered to take a rest by his physician, and goes abroad to seek recreation and relaxation. At his London hotel, he finds in his dresser drawer some letters addressed to Miss Phyllis Huntingdon in the handwriting of an old chum, and impelled by a Quixotic impulse, he determines to restore them to their owner in person. From London he proceeds to Paris, thence to Marseilles, through the Mediterranean to Port Said and the Orient, very much in the style of an up-to-date Gabriel and Evangeline affair, always finding at each port that Miss Huntingdon’s departure had antedated his arrival by a few hours. Finally his quest is rewarded at Colombo on the island of Ceylon, where he meets Phyllis, a ruddy-haired, winsome young woman, who is likened successively by the imaginative Mr. Mott to a dish of pink ice cream, a rosy-tipped peony, and the summer girl on a magazine cover. They come back together across the world, ending the trip, after the excitement of a misunderstanding and a quarrel, in orthodox fashion. A lively trifle of globe-trotting and philandering is “The Pursuit of Phyllis,” easy to read, and disarming criticism by its utter lack of seriousness and significance. DAPHNE AND HER LAD. By M. J. LAGEN and CALLY RYLAND. Henry Holt, New York. Price, $1.25. A story told in letters—the brilliant and showy correspondence so much affected in fiction and so rarely indulged in in real life. The writers, too, are newspaper folk, a man and a woman, each editor of a woman’s page, and we mildly wonder how they ever found time to sacrifice so much good “copy” to private correspondence. At first, the exchange of letters is but a journalistic flirtation between two unknown personalities, and it is maintained and continued to the point of intimate self-revelation and ardent lovemaking before the writers meet in the last chapter. The disclosure and denouement of the conclusion come with somewhat of a shock to the unsuspecting reader who has followed the airy persiflage and sentimental outpourings of these industrious letter writers with no thought of such a tragic ending as that on which the curtain falls. It was Stevenson who said that to give a bad ending to a story meant to end happily, or vice versa, was an unpardonable literary crime, and we must hold the authors of “Daphne and Her Lad” guilty of this offense. The story was not framed along the tragic lines which logically or artistically lead to hopeless misery, and the final impression is disturbing and ineffective. THE MILLIONAIRE BABY. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.