4 DECEMBER 1909, Page 11

The Story of the Little Merman. By Ethel Reader. (Macmillan

and Co. 3s. 6d.)—The "little merman," having purchased for himself a human body from a dwarf of the mountains at the price of his fishy tail, which, indeed, he could hardly have kept, sots out on the search for a human soul. And he finds it, but with a happier result than was the experience of the unhappy Undine. How he finds it we will not say. It is all told in a very lively fashion, and with an undertone of what we may call " chaff " about which we do not feel so certain. There is a second story included in the volume, "The Queen of the Gnomes," which is of the same quality. Both are set off with some excellent illustrations by Mr. Frank C. Pape. The "witch" (p. 223) is the very ideal of witches.