For about ten years now the writings of Paul Bourget have had great success in London’s capitol, Mayfair, among a certain set or circle of ladies whose minds are as carefully tended as are their beautiful bodies. They have read him, even as they have read Anatole France and Marcel Prévost, because of notes of distinction in the writings, the lack of discord, the evidences of balanced, graceful, well-valeted life. Bourget belongs to the group of writers who are sometimes termed Salon-writers. I imagine it is a German classification; it brings before the vision one writing with a gold pen using a silver standish upon a table of sycamore. Perhaps if we say in English “the kid-glove school” the phrase will describe, if it does not please. This note of refinement in style, distinction in utterance, is certainly represented best in France by Bourget, in Italy by D’Annunzio, in Holland by Couperus, in America by Saltus. Of course other countries have claims too. There has been very little written about Bourget in English, not because he writes French, but because he writes. In a _conte_ charmingly named _A Bouquet of Illusions_ Bourget himself is one of the characters, the protagonist part in fact. The _conte_ is written by Saltus and is worthy of both novelists. G. F. MONKSHOOD. LONDON, 1908. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AUTHOR’S NOTE Not long ago I assisted at the unexpected end of an adventure, which, after it had just missed being a tragedy, concluded in an almost comic fashion. Although I was only cast for a very small part, as a simple spectator, my heart was too much mixed up in it for me to-day not to feel in similar circumstances the bitter sensation of the irony of things, which may be either cruel or beneficial. It is the chill of the steel which cuts you, though it cures you too. It has occurred to me to make the adventure into a story. Obviously it would be more reasonable to go on with one of my unfinished pictures, “The Pardon of Psyche,” for instance, which has been standing on the easel for years, or one of those inanimate objects: old furniture, silver, and books, which will comprise the series called “Humble Friends.”