Given a plot of the conventional order I dare say it is best to make very little fuss or mystery about it. So, at any rate, "KATHARINE TYNAN" seems to think, for after about page 32 of her latest book, _Since First I Saw Your Face_ (HUTCHINSON), there is really almost no guessing left to do, the authoress seeming principally concerned to ensure a smooth passage for one's prophecies. Thus, while the unknown son of a secret marriage, happening by good luck to thrash the ostensible claimant to the title and heroine, gets that successful start in the early pages that is so necessary to his happiness in the last, and the lady never really looks like straying far into disconcerting opinions of her own, even the rival himself obliges us by throwing up the sponge just when the game should really begin. All this is soothing enough, but it is also very thin stuff; and the addition of a ghostly ancestress, who lures her descendants to midnight assignations by smiling at them out of a LELY painting, does not stiffen things much. The fact is that away from such a purely Irish subject as, say, "Countrymen All," Mrs. HINKSON really has not much to tell. Sweeney's New York Stores do not harmonise at all well with her atmosphere of wistful tragedy. The effect suggests a soap-bubble trying to cake-walk. * * * * * When cattle-ships put forth to sea From Montreal across the Atlantic, The life on board would not suit me, Nor you, I think. The cattle frantic, The tough steel plates beneath the might Of crashing waters well-nigh riven-- Ugh! Here it is in black and white, Clearly described by FREDERICK NIVEN. Published by HEINEMANN (six bob), The book relates the ceaseless battle Which they must wage whose steady job Is valeting a mob of cattle; And yet they pant to get a ship, For jobs the owners they importune At--mark you this!--one pound the trip! I wouldn't do it for a fortune. It's just a tale of common men, Who never went to school or college, Writ by a skilled and practised pen Most certainly from first-hand knowledge; It has no very obvious plan, No movement, no connected story; And yet I don't see how you can Fail to enjoy The _S.S. Glory_. You'll meet some men you're sure to like-- Men who would greet you as a brother; One is that honest fellow, _Mike_, And _Cockney_, possibly, another; Unpolished, quick to wrath and slow, When roused, to lay aside their cholor, Yet are they types you ought to know As well as did the hero, _Scholar_. * * * * * [Illustration: THE UNINTERNED PERIL IN OUR MIDST. Portrait of Herr Pfunk ("Sister Susie"), who edits "Our Mites' Corner" in the well-known weekly, _Mum's Pets_, and also conducts a column of "Hints to Mothers," which is having an alarming effect on infant mortality.] * * * * *