If I may say so without offence, Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS reminds me a little of those billiard experts who, having evolved a particular stroke, will continue it indefinitely, to the joy of the faithful and the exasperated boredom of the others. To explain my metaphor, I gather that Mr. BURROUGHS, having "got set," to an incredible number of thousands, with an invention called _Tarzan_, is now by way of beating his own record over the adventures of _John Carter_ in the red planet Mars. Concerning these amazing volumes there is just this to say, that either you can read them with avidity or you can't read them at all. From certain casual observations I conceive the test to be primarily one of youth, for honesty compels my middle-age to admit a personal failure. I saw the idea; for one thing no egg was ever a quarter so full of meat as the Martian existence of incomprehensible thrills, to heighten the effect of which Mr. BURROUGHS has invented what amounts to a new language, with a glossary of its own, thus appealing to a well-known instinct of boyhood, but rendering the whole business of a more than Meredithian obscurity to the uninitiate. I have hitherto forgotten to say that the particular volume before me is called _The War Lord of Mars_ (METHUEN). I may add that it closes with the heroic _Carter_ hailed as Jeddak of Jeddaks, which sounds eminently satisfactory, though without conveying any definite promise of finality. * * * * * [Illustration: _The Knight._ "LET'S SEE. WE HAVE ALREADY OVERCOME THE CHIEF JAILER AND HIS TEN ASSISTANTS, AND SLAIN THE FEARSOME HOUND WHICH GUARDED THE COURTYARD. WE HAVE NOW TO DESTROY THE ONE-EYED GIANT AND THE BEAN-FED DRAGON, SCALE THE OUTER WALL, SWIM THE MOAT AND THEN TO HORSE. COURAGE, SWEET LADY! YOU ARE PRACTICALLY SAVED."] * * * * * =Do Poultry Pay?= "Six Hens for sale, some laying 7s. each."--_Local Paper._ You will find three of them as good as a guinea-fowl. * * * * * "But the germ of Socialism or BZolshevism--however you like to call it--has hardly entered the Polish working-class blood." _Provincial Paper._ We fear, however, that it has got into our contemporary's composing-room. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Page 116 corrected Typo: changed "Encylopaedia" to "Encyclopaedia".