In “Four Dreams of Gram Perkins” Ruth Sawyer weaves one of the oddest yarns ever spun from dream stuff, yet as surely of the Maine folk as “Singing Woman” is of the Isle Brevelle natives. In their climactic progress Zeb Perkins’s dreams maintain consistently the ruling passion of Gram’s life as well as the character of Zeb himself, self-appointed layer of Gram’s ghost. Sardonic humour saves these dreams from the horrific as tenderness redeems Ada Jack Carver’s song of death. “Shades of George Sand!” happens to fall into a category all its own. Mr. Lieber, placing it second, comments on its air of savoir faire and mature quality; the chairman appreciates the rebellion of Mathilde against her environment, her escape into a pseudo-paradise and consequent descent into limbo. Only the clever girl, apparently doomed to rusticity, fired by ancestry, and nourished by experiences vicarious as those which fed Mathilde, can guess with what eagerness Mathilde set out for Chicago. The meanness of Flora Campbell’s respectable boarding house and the defection of Mathilde’s hero may have struck down momentarily the girl’s aspirations; but surely the conference with her tutelary shade gave Mathilde courage to follow her star; and if she has not presided over a salon, she has found something better. The mordant, yeasty humour of this tale should leaven the collection, in general a serious collection. “The Scarlet Woman,” in length about that of “The Killers,” required greater skill in elimination. Whereas “The Killers” belongs to the true short-story genre in brevity of time, close circumscription of place, and sharply defined conflict, “The Scarlet Woman” is a novel which, paradoxically and exceptionally, succeeds as a short short story. In its 3,000 words, the author, by concentrating the essence of Vergie Winters’s life, has escaped a mere synopsis. To say it differently, he has revealed by high lights the passive conflict one woman endured with the social order, a conflict the motive of which is love. The obstacles in the way, too great to be surmounted, Mr. Bromfield has disregarded with a featness that recalls Columbus’s triumph with the egg. THE LISTS Before consulting the appended lists, please note the following abbreviations: ABBREVIATIONS