There are two things for which I have a special affection. One is an old friend who has often persuaded me that this world is rather a place for smiles than for gloom; and the other is a new book of stories which have life in them, which make their effect with a seemingly artless certainty and leave the pleased reader with the impression that they are, if anything, a shade or so too short. Both these things I have obtained in _One Kind and Another_ (SECKER), by Mr. BARRY PAIN. "The Journal of Aura Lovel," with which Mr. PAIN leads off, is a delightful performance. It has freshness and charm and its sentiment seems to me to be exactly right--the sentiment of an eager and attractive young girl relating the feelings of her heart in the tenderest and prettiest style as far removed from preciosity as it is from a silly simplicity. All the stories have the essential merits of brightness and lightness, and most of them have that peculiar kind of ingenuity which is one of Mr. PAIN's strong points. Suddenly they land you at a point which is nowhere near to that to which you thought you were travelling. The characters, even when they are engaged in paradoxical and preposterous actions, are real men and women, such as you could meet almost anywhere in a day's walk, and they are set off with Mr. PAIN's fancy so as to become additionally lifelike. Many things have struck me in the reading of this book. One is that Mr. PAIN's new novel is overdue. Another is that he has an uncanny familiarity with the ways of solicitors. "There is," he says, "no historical instance of a solicitor after the age of forty having made any change whatever in the manner of his clothing." * * * * *