Despite the fact that in July, 1914, the London _Times_ lifted the veil of secrecy from the face of the most prevalent disease in the world, and thus announced that the name of the disease which Fracastorius, the poet-physician of Verona, borrowed from the shepherd Syphlus should be no longer taboo by "nice people," the prevalence of the disease and the efforts to combat it have been widely discussed, though they are not topics of conversation at dinner-parties or at "welfare meetings" in churches, as tuberculosis is. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the author prefers to kill his "hero" with leprosy. But Doctor Maugham has been devoting so much of his time in latter years to novels and dramas that he finds the differentiation between them difficult, and, too, Gauguin's disease has been diagnosticated leprosy, elephantiasis, syphilis. "La dernière de ces avaries est exacte, mais ne doit pas être imputées au pays: c'était une pure vérole parisienne." "The Moon and Sixpence" is interesting. There is scarcely any diversion more engrossing than reading about others' infirmities unless it be relating one's own. Hence the continued popularity of Pepys, Amiel, Rousseau, Marie Bashkirsteff, and other garrulous sufferers. But it is a book that no one can be the better or happier for reading, and it does Gauguin's memory an injury because it parodies it. His life as it has been revealed to us was bizarre and irregular enough. We could wish that he had been less like Rimbaud and more like Rodin, but, distressing as his behavior was, seen in conventional light, we should like not to have seen it featured in fiction. Mr. Maugham wrote a novel, "Out of Human Bondage," which is a far more meritorious piece of work than "The Moon and Sixpence," in which some of his professional colleagues--he is a physician--recognized portraitures. Perhaps it was his success with them that encouraged him to try a larger canvas. The author's admitted cleverness was never more evident than in the depiction of Mrs. Strickland's character and characteristics--a smug Philistine, who runs the gamut of preciosity, jealousy, martyrdom, autorighteousness, and autosanctification. She is pleased and proud as she views the veneer of sanctimoniousness which her son, in holy orders, gives the dearly beloved husband of Mrs. Charles Strickland, who wrote his father's biography "to remove certain misconceptions which had gained currency," viz., that Doctor Maugham is masquerading as a psychiatrist and publishing his experiences with the insane, meanwhile throwing off "punk" about art and traducing normal, though admittedly "immoral," man.