Again Bram Stoker! His latest to chance my way is "The Jewel of Seven Stars." With every reading of this English weird-tale master, I am seized in profound melancholia, despairing the fact that he did not live another twenty years, to pen another score novels. Not content with being a master of superb plot (involved plot too!) Stoker went to exquisite pains to instill that ultra-weird and chilling sense of the unreal so characteristic of his work. In "Jewel of the Seven Stars," he spins a yarn of Egyptian queens who wield a strange and powerful influence over the lives of present-day people; of mummified cats walking again and striking in the dark, vampire-like; of hypnotic spells and influences; of developments so utterly mystifying and gripping, the reader cannot put the book down after once opening it. And Bram Stoker's novels are not the abbreviated two-hundred page book so much in evidence today; they are voluminous; though not, I might mention, as "infinite" as "Anthony Adverse." * * * * * Here is something--not strictly fantasy, but certainly of interest to all who make fantasy a hobby--which I have deemed worthy of passing on: about twenty years ago there lived in Honolulu, in the much-sung Hawaiian Islands, a man, W. D. Westervelt by name, who spent all his spare time in the collecting of legends and myths about volcanoes. Perhaps the best result of his efforts was a little book called "Legends of Hawaiian Volcanoes," small but crammed to the fly-leaves with fascinating historical, scientific, and mythological data. Others had the titles of "Legends of Ghosts and Ghost-Gods," "Legends of Old Honolulu," "Legends of Maui," etc. No, not true fantasy, but they read like first-rate weird stories. Incidentally, this is a field for stories practically untouched; tales built around Hawaiian and other old native legends have been scarce. * * * * * Once, in those dear dead days when I first awakened to the call of fantasy, I was seized with some strange outbreak of energy; and typed two copies of Edmond Hamilton's first tale, "The Monster God of Mamurth." The copies are still on had. Not faultless typing, but readable. If anyone has not read this great little story by Hamilton, I'll gladly send a copy to the first two fans writing me. * * * * * The Slanting Shadow by August W. Derleth Mr. Abner Follansbee, investigator for the Society for Psychic Research, stopped his car to peer out into the Wisconsin woods. To his companion he said, "This is apparently the place, Fred. There's a sign off to one side. Pretty well shot. 'Kroll's Inn'. Let's see that young lady's letter again." Fred Tenny took a letter from his inner coat pocket and thrust it toward Follansbee, who opened it and regarded the scrawled writing dubiously.