I hope that Mr. VAUGHAN KESTER, author of _John o' Jamestown_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), is innocent of intent to do the dreadful thing that he has done. With the book itself I have no fault to find; it is quite a good historical novel, and tells with a fair amount of excitement the story of _Captain John Smith_ and the early settlers in Virginia, not omitting _Pocahontas_. Mr. KESTER'S crime consists not in his novel, but in the fact that he has probably plunged America into all the horrors of a new outbreak of historical fiction. A few years ago every adult in the United States was writing historical novels. Those were the black days at the beginning of this century, still spoken of with a shudder from Maine to Tennessee. Gradually the horror spent itself; the country became pacified. Except for an occasional sporadic outbreak, the plague was stamped out. It got about that the historical novel was "a dead one," and young America turned to something else. Now you begin to see what Mr. KESTER has done. While Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON are publishing _John o' Jamestown_ over in England, another firm is flooding the States with it. Mr. KESTER is a confirmed "best-seller" on the other side of the Atlantic. Probably his American publishers have issued a first edition of a hundred thousand of this story. The result may be imagined. Wild-eyed literary agents will carry the fiery cross throughout the country, crying that the historical novel is not dead after all, that there is still money in it; and thousands of estimable young men who might have been turning out quite decent stories of American life will thrust paper into their typewriters and begin, "Of the days when I followed my dear lord through many a hard-fought fray it ill becomes me, plain rude man that I am, to speak...." And it will be Mr. KESTER'S fault. It would not matter so much if the great army of American writers could do the thing even half as well as he has done it in _John o' Jamestown_; but they cannot. I know them, and that is why a great trembling runs through me so that I can scarce hold my pen to complete this review. * * * * *