#Legends#, by _Walter McLaren Imrie_ (The Midland Press, Glennie, Alcona Co., Mich.). I should like to call special attention to this little book by a medical officer in the Canadian army, because it seems to me to be a significant footnote to the poignant records of Barbusse, Duhamel, and Élie Faure. So far as I know, this is the only volume of fiction written in English portraying successfully from the artist's point of view the acrid monotony of war. I believe that it deserves to be placed on the same bookshelf as the volumes of the others whom I have just mentioned. #Travelling Companions#, by _Henry James_ (Boni & Liveright). These seven short stories by Henry James, which are now collected for the first time with a somewhat inept introduction by Albert Mordell, were written at the same time as the stories in his "Passionate Pilgrim." While they only serve to reveal a minor aspect of his genius, they are of considerable importance historically to the student of his literary evolution. Published between 1868 and 1874, they represent the first flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings of his sense of international contrasts. #The Best American Humorous Short Stories#, Edited by _Alexander Jessup_ (Boni & Liveright). This collection of eighteen humorous short stories furnish a tolerable conspectus of the period between 1839 and the present day. They are prefaced by an informative historical introduction which leaves little to be desired from the point of view of information. The general reader will find the book less interesting than the specialist, since a large portion of the volume is devoted to the somewhat crude beginnings of humor in our literature. Apart from the stories by Edward Everett Hale, Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, Bret Harte, and "O. Henry," the comparative poverty of rich understanding humor in American fiction is remarkable. The most noteworthy omission in the volume is the neglect of Irvin S. Cobb. #John Stuyvesant Ancestor and Other People#, by _Alvin Johnson_ (Harcourt, Brace & Howe). This collection of sketches, largely reprinted from the New Republic, is rather a series of studies in social and economic relations than a group of short stories. But they concern us here because of Mr. Johnson's penetrating analysis of character, which constitutes a document of no little value to the imaginative student of our institutions, and "Short Change" has no little value as a vividly etched short story.