TOP O' THE MORNIN', by _Seumas MacManus_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company). Mr. MacManus's new collection of Irish tales has ups and downs like a Galway road, but his ups are very good indeed and show that he has by no means lost the folk imagination which made his early books rank among the very best of their kind. I can specially commend to the reader "The Widow Meehan's Cassimeer Shawl," "The Bellman of Carrick," and "The Heart-Break of Norah O'Hara." BLISS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Katherine Mansfield_ (Alfred A. Knopf). I have no hesitation in stating after careful thought that Miss Mansfield's first book of short stories at once places her in the great European tradition on a par with Chekhov and De Maupassant. This is certainly the most important book of short stories which has come to my notice since I began to edit this series of books. I say this with the more emphasis because, although her technique is the same as that of Chekhov, she is one of the few writers to whom a close study of Chekhov has done no harm. Most American short story writers are bad because they copy "O. Henry," and most English short story writers are bad because they copy Chekhov. Chekhov and "O. Henry" were both great writers because they copied nobody. I hope that the success of Miss Mansfield's book will not have the effect of substituting a new model instead of these two. Mr. Knopf is to be complimented for his taste in publishing the best two volumes of short stories of the year. It is a disinterested service to literature. A CHAIR ON THE BOULEVARD, by _Leonard Merrick_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). It is unnecessary at this date to point out the special excellences of Leonard Merrick. They are such as to ensure him a tolerably secure position in the history of the English short story. But it may be well to point out that the vice of his excellence is his proneness to sentimentality. This is more evident in Mr. Merrick's other volumes than in the present collection, which is really a reissue of his best stories, including that masterpiece, "The Tragedy of a Comic Song." If one were to compile an anthology of the world's best twenty stories, this story would be among them. SELECTED ENGLISH SHORT STORIES (XIX AND XX CENTURIES), edited by _H.S.M._ (Oxford University Press). This volume has the merit of containing in very short compass twenty-eight stories by English and American authors, not too conventionally selected, which would form admirable texts for a short story course. It includes stories by Mark Rutherford and Richard Garnett which are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and if taken in conjunction with the previous volume in the same series, provides a tolerably complete conspectus of the development of the short story in England and America since 1800.