True, one of his most acclaimed works, _The Way We Live Now_, dealt with the business world; but it did so in a rough rather than a gentle way, in a later period of his life when he had begun to develop somewhat more jaundiced views of society as it had evolved. The satire of _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_ is too clever by half. George Robinson is the young pup who defends himself after the bankruptcy of the firm with an unrepentant statement of his faith in advertising, and he presents himself as the unreliable narrator with a self-serving view of his stewardship. Demonstrating the creative imagination that led him to ruin, he compares his senior partner to King Lear. "Think what it must be to be papa to a Goneril and a Regan--without the Cordelia. I have always looked on Mrs. Jones as a regular Goneril; and as for the Regan, why it seems to me that Miss Brown is likely to be Miss Regan to the end of the chapter." Sarah Jane, the elder sister and the "Goneril," marries Mr. Jones; and Robinson himself aspires to the hand of Maryanne, the "Regan" who joins her sister in turning on their father and attempting to secure his small fortune for themselves. Robinson's dedication to the doctrines of Credit and Advertising, rather than to those of Capital, leads him to run through that part of the four thousand pounds that Brown provided to start their haberdashery business. Brown and Jones stand agog as Robinson hires four men in armour to ride draft horses through the streets announcing the opening of Magenta House. And Mr. Brown cannot understand why Robinson should advertise four hundred dozen white cotton hose. "We haven't got 'em. . . . I did want to do a genuine trade in stockings." "And so you shall, sir. But how will you begin unless you attract your customers?" Robinson retorts, and he goes on to advertise "English-sewn Worcester gloves, made of French kid," which actually came from the wholesale houses in St. Paul's churchyard. The inevitable downfall of the overextended firm can surely provide a number of cautionary tales for future students of the success and failure of businesses, but these lessons are lost on George Robinson, who reacts by transferring his devotion from Maryanne Brown, who abandons him in the end, to the goddess of Commerce. "Oh sweet Commerce, teach me thy lessons! Let me ever buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest." What is it that made the foibles of the Church so humorous in Trollope's hands, while the schemes of the business world merely led to a ho-hum reaction at its cupidity and stupidity? Is it that the men of the cloth retained a few cloaks of honor and respectability yet to be stripped away, while the businessmen may never have had any such cloaks? In any event, the reading public and the critics helped Trollope to find his way, which was not along the way of Commerce and Advertising. BRINGING GOOD BEER TO DEVON RACHEL RAY