American improvements are the wonder of the world. America seems to have the knack of taking hold of old stuff and turning it into something full of pep and punch. You remember a play called _Hamlet_? No? Well, there is a scene in it, rather an impressive scene, where a man chats with his father's ghost. Mr. ROBERT W. CHAMBERS, America's brightest novelist, has taken much the same idea and put a bit of zip in it. In his latest work, _Athalie_ (APPLETON), the heroine, who is clairvoyant, sees the ghost of the hero's mother, who prevented the hero from marrying her, and cuts it. "A hot proud colour flared in her cheeks as she drew quietly aside and stood with averted head to let her pass." In all my researches in modern fiction I cannot recall a more dramatic and satisfying situation. It is, I believe, the first instance on record of a spectre being snubbed. SHAKSPEARE never thought of anything like that. As regards the other aspects of _Athalie_, the book, I cannot see what else a reviewer can say but that it is written by Mr. CHAMBERS. The world is divided into those who read every line Mr. CHAMBERS writes, irrespective of its merits, and those who would require to be handsomely paid before reading a paragraph by him. A million eager shop-girls, school-girls, chorus-girls, factory-girls and stenographers throughout America are probably devouring _Athalie_ at this moment. My personal opinion that the book is a potboiler, turned out on a definite formula, like all of Mr. CHAMBERS' recent work, to meet a definite demand, cannot deter a single one of them from sobbing over it. As for that section of the public which remembers _The King in Yellow_ and _Cardigan_, it has long ago become resigned to Mr. CHAMBERS' decision to take the cash and let the credit go, and has ceased to hope for a return on his part to the artistic work of his earlier period, when he wrote novels as opposed to Best Sellers. * * * * *