The Angel and the Author — and Others. By Jerome K. Jerome.
(Hurst and Blackett. 3s. 6d.)—There is plenty of humour and plenty of good sense in this volume, Mr. Jerome can make fun
in a pleasant fashion of oddities among others and among our- selves. Sometimes he can sound a sterner note. "One lady of my acquaintance," he writes, "is a Poor Law Guardian and secretary to a labour bureau. But then she runs a house with two servants, four children and a husband, and appears to be so used to bothers that she would feel herself lost without them. You can do this kind of work apparently even when you are bothered with a home. It is the skirt dancing and the poker work that cannot brook rivalry." On the other hand, we have some pleasant laughter about German red-tape. The traveller wants to register a letter in a post-office as big as the Bank of England. He sees " Registration " over a wicket and thinks he has found the right place among a dozen. "Name and address ?" asks the official. He is a little confused. "Name of mother ? " He cannot remember. She has been dead twenty years. "When did it die ? " "What die ? " he asks. "The child." "What child ? " He explains that he wants to register a letter. And the wicket is sharply shut. A very readable volume.
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