The Jam Girl. By Frances R. Sterrett. (D. Appleton and
Co. 6s.)—To write an average American novel you must take the same ingredients as you would for an American farce. Let the hero and heroine belong to families whose enmity is notorious, show us alternately his home and hers, let all the subsidiary characters pop in and out of opposite doors, clothe the crudity of this theme in a dress of Yankee slang, flavour with a happy ending, and there you are. Indeed, the influence of the drama on this novel is so strong that when the hero exclaims at the end, "Then that is all right. . . . I am sure we shall all be as happy as kings—and queens," we can almost hear the orchestra come in with a crash of cymbals. Miss Sterrett has followed these conven- tional lines with zeal and a fair success. Hiram Bingham and Judith Henderson, the heirs of rival "jam kings," meet at Pontarlier over a pot of jam. Their subsequent adventures
are positively sticky with references to jam, and the long arm of coincidence is stretched to breaking-point. We must furthermore quarrel with Miss Sterrett over her hasty assump- tion that no respectable European girl would travel alone by night on the Sud express. We assure her that it can be done with no serious loss of moral character.
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