* * * * * [Illustration: The new Cash Register as used at the Royal College of Music for calculating the value per minute of voices in the vocal training department.] * * * * * Good costume novels are not so common nowadays that I can pass _Desmond O'Connor_ (Long) without a most hearty welcome. For it is an excellent example of its class--full of rescues, of swashbuckling and of midnight escapes; with a gallant hero (and Irish at that), a lovely heroine, two bold bad villains and a sufficiency of kings and other historical celebrities to fill the background picturesquely. In fact Mr. George H. Jessop has seen to it that no ingredient proper to this kind of dish shall be wanting, and I have great pleasure in congratulating him upon the result. _Desmond_ was a soldier of fortune, a captain in the gallant Irish Brigade that served King Louis XIV. against the Allies. During the siege of Bruges the young captain chanced to see one morning at mass the fair _Margaret, Countess of Anhalt_. She had lately fled to the town to frustrate the intentions of _Louis_, who would have given her hand to an equally unwilling suitor. There was also, hanging about, a certain _De Brissac_, who in the event of the countess's death or imprisonment would succeed to her estates. So off we go, cut and thrust, sword, cloak and rapier, all to the right jingle of tushery, till the last chapter, in which _King Louis_ relents and does what kings (of France especially) always do in the last chapters of historical romances. Really it seems sometimes as though the Louvre under the Monarchy must have been run as a kind of superior matrimonial agency in a large way of business. Anyhow he rings down the curtain upon a bustling tale that should add to the reputation of its author. * * * * * The Conqueror of Ouimet. As the grief of a lioness reft of her cubs, Or a general ragged by the rawest of subs, Or a rigid supporter of temperance clubs Accused of frequenting the lowest of pubs, Or a burglar defied by the skill that is Chubb's, Is America's grief at the triumph of Tubbs.