* * * * * [Illustration: _Prospective Employer._ "HOW OLD ARE YOU?" _Applicant for Post._ "FOURTEEN--AND UNMARRIED."] * * * * * These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the contents. Fortunately, _Uncle Simon_ (HUTCHINSON) is a story quite cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years before--here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, MARGARET and H. DE VERE STACPOOLE have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the wild oats that _Uncle Simon_ tries to retrieve are not of to-day but from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the authors simply wake _Uncle Simon_ up and go home. As a small literary coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under a transparent disguise, is the scene of _Uncle Simon's_ restoration. Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy, which I can most cordially commend. * * * * *