Quilter_ must be the reason for your reading the book, and your reward. She is real jam. * * * * * The tales Miss ETHEL DELL includes Within _The Swindler_ (UNWIN) pleased me, Not by their thrills or interludes Of tenderness--these hardly seized me; Not by their people, though the pack Were amiable and pleasant creatures, Barring the villains who were black And villainous in all their features. By none of these my pulse was jerked Out of its normal calm condition, But by the plots, with which I worked A quite exciting competition; A point was mine if, at the start, I guessed the way a yarn was tending; Miss DELL'S, if by consummate art She failed to use the obvious ending. The first two tales she won on; three And four were mine; five hers; six, seven And eight I got hands down; and she Got square with nine and ten. Eleven Is still unwritten, and I bide Impatiently its birth, for that'll Finally, so I trust, decide The issue of our hard-fought battle.