What I like best in the stories of Mr. W. W. JACOBS, apart from their mere hilarity, is their triumphant vindication of the right to jest. They spread themselves before me like a pageant representing the graceful submission of the easy dupe. They tempt me to filch away chairs from beneath stout and elderly gentlemen who are about to sit down. Take the case of _Sergeant-Major Farrer_ in _Night Watches_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). He was afraid of nothing on earth, or off it, but ghosts, and he despised the weedy young man who was in love with his daughter. So the weedy young man dared him to come to a haunted cottage at midnight, and, dressed up as a spectre, terrified the soldier into something more than a strategic retreat, with the result that he surrendered his daughter. In real life of course it is different. I know a colour-sergeant, and somehow I rather think that if I--but never mind. In Mr. JACOBS' beautiful world, as it is with _Mr. Farrer_ so is it with _Peter Russet_, with _Ginger Dick_ and with _Sam Small_. They know when the laugh is against them, and, waiving the appeal to force or to law, they grumble but retire. There is one exercise in the gruesome in _Night Watches_, but it hardly shows Mr. JACOBS at his best in this particular vein. There are also several charming illustrations by Mr. STANLEY DAVIS, executed with a buff tint, which help to sustain the gossamer illusion. * * * If I were a woman I should always be a little irritated with any story which shows two women in love with the same man. Miss MAY SINCLAIR in her new novel does not mind how much she annoys her own sex. She shows us no fewer than three women engaged in this competition, and they are sisters. True, there was not much choice for them in their lonely moorland village, which contained a young doctor and no other eligible man. Of this fellow _Rowcliffe_ we are told that "his eyes were liable in repose to become charged with a curious and engaging pathos," an attraction which had broken many hearts before the story opened, and gave to their owner a great sense of confidence in himself. This set me against him at the start, but the three sisters, as I said, were not in a position to be fastidious. _Mary's_ love for him was of the social-domestic kind; _Gwenda's_ was spiritual; _Alice's_ frankly physical. Though alleged to be "as good as gold," _Alice_, the youngest of _The Three Sisters_ (HUTCHINSON), was one of those hysterical women who threaten to die or go mad unless they get married--a very unpleasant fact for a young doctor to have to discuss with her sister, and for us to read about. Indeed, if I were to tell in all its incredible crudity the story of the relations of this gently-bred girl with the drunken farmer who, to her knowledge, had previously betrayed her own servant-girl, I think even Miss SINCLAIR would be revolted. Her exposure of certain secret things which common decency agrees to leave in silence