If you were the hero of a novel, the only possible mate for the heroine, and, in short, taking you all round, an important sort of person, would you not consider yourself hardly treated if you were not allowed to make the girl's acquaintance till page 311, when you knew there were to be only three hundred and thirty-two pages in the book? I disagree entirely with _Roger Quinn_, in Miss BEATRICE KELSTON'S _The Blows of Circumstance_ (LONG), when, reviewing the affair, he writes to a friend: "It's amazing that we fell short of perfect understanding." My opinion is that _Roger_ did extremely well in the little time he was given. Of course he had conducted the case for the Crown when she was in the dock, charged with murder, and that formed a sort of bond between them; but even so I don't see how he could have got much nearer to a complete understanding, considering that the girl dashed off and committed suicide almost before he could get a word in. If my enjoyment of _The Blows of Circumstance_ waned towards the end and the book seemed to me to lose grip, it was because the sudden discovery on the part of _Quinn_ and _Amalie Gayne_ that they were soul-mates was too sudden to convince me. Up to the beginning of the trial the story has vigour and an air of probability, with its careful building-up of _Amalie's_ curious character and the vivid description of her life on the stage and off it in the society of a drug-taking husband; but from that point on it seemed to me to fail. In real life all might have happened just as it is set down, but real life is sloppily constructed. A novel must obey more rigid rules. Miss KELSTON writes extremely well, if a trifle too gloomily for my personal taste, but she cannot afford to ignore the laws of construction and hurl her big situation at the reader with an abrupt "Take it or leave it!" * * * * * For _Thirteen Stories_ I've nought but praise, Although you'll find when you overhaul them They're best described, in the author's phrase, As "sketches, studies or what do you call them?" Per DUCKWORTH forward and back you trek; You may book right through or choose between a Peep at Perim or Chapultepec, Sahara, Hampstead or Argentina. You may halt, if you will, at phalansteries, Where Mescaleros on maturangos Eat or drink (whichever it is) Baked tortillas and twang changangos. Suchlike things come easy as pie To the author, Mr. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, And I quite like 'em so long as I Have only to read and not to say 'em. * * * * *