17 MAY 1902, Page 21

At Sunwich Port. By W. W. Jacobs. (G. Newnes. 6s.) — A

one-act farce is a familiar and not unpopular kind of enter- tainment. But a farce in three or five acts is not likely to hold the attention of an audience. At Sunwich Port is amusing, but there is too much of it. The actors grow up in the course of the story ; and the "grown-ups " do not please as much as do the children. Still, the reader requires no great effort to persevere to the end. There are always flashes of merriment. Mr. Samson Wilks, steward and ex-steward, is consistently entertaining ; Master Hardy exhibits in later life, though under a different form, the same powers of self-defence that had distinguished him as a boy ; and Kate Nugent in a short frock and a mane is most dis- tinctly the mother of the damsel who draws the golden youth of Sunwich Port with a single hair.