Such was the state of things in the world at large. In literary London, publishers produced their spring lists. They contained the usual hardy annuals and bi-annuals among novelists, several new ventures, including John Potter's _Giles in Bloomsbury_ (second impression); Jane Hobart's _Children of Peace_ (A Satire by a New Writer); and Leila Yorke's _The Price of Honour_. ('In her new novel, Leila Yorke reveals to the full the Glittering psychology combined with profound depths which have made this well-known writer famous. The tale will be read, from first page to last, with breathless interest. The end is unexpected and out of the common, and leaves one wondering.' So said the publisher; the reviewers, more briefly, 'Another Leila Yorke.') There were also many memoirs of great persons by themselves, many histories of the recent war, several thousand books of verse, a monograph by K.D. Varick on Catalysers and Catalysis and the Generation of Hydrogen, and _New Wine_ by the Reverend Laurence Juke. The journalistic world also flourished. The _Weekly Fact_ had become, as people said, quite an interesting and readable paper, brighter than the _Nation_, more emotional than the _New Statesman_, gentler than the _New Witness_, spicier than the _Spectator_, more chatty than the _Athenaeum_, so that one bought it on bookstalls and read it in trains. There was also the new Pinkerton fourpenny, the _Wednesday Chat_, brighter, more emotional, gentler, spicier, and chattier than them all, and vulgar as well, nearly as vulgar as _John Bull_, and quite as sentimental, but less vicious, so that it sold in its millions from the outset, and soon had a poem up on the walls of the tube stations, saying-- 'No other weeklies sell Anything like so well.' which was as near the truth as these statements usually are. Lord Pinkerton had, in fact, with his usual acumen, sensed the existence of a great Fourpenny Weekly Public, and given it, as was his wont, more than it desired or deserved. The sixpenny weekly public already had its needs met; so had the penny, the twopenny, the threepenny, and the shilling public. Now the fourpenny public, a shy and modest section of the community, largely clerical (in the lay sense of the word) looked up and was fed. Those brains which could only with effort rise to the solid political and economic information and cultured literary judgments meted out by the sixpennies, but which yet shrank from the crudities of our cheapest journals, here found something they could read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. The Potterite press (not only Lord Pinkerton's) advanced, like an army terrible with banners, on all sections of the line. 3