John Gayther's Garden, and the Stories Told therein. By Frank
R. Stockton. (Cassell and Co. 6s.)—There is a delicately restrained extravagance in Mr. Stockton's fiction which is peculiarly attractive. It is different from farce, by which we mean something of coarser texture, but it is not less irresistibly comic than farce of the very broadest. Some of the eleven stories which go to make up this volume are admirable specimens of this art.
My Translatophone " is, perhaps, the best. The Professor when a young man was very much engrossed with mechanical inven- tions, and let slip an opportunity which he had of successfully courting a certain Mary Armat. Mary goes out to Burmah as a missionary; he contrives a marvellous machine which turns the words of any language spoken into one end into good English at the other. Mary comes home; the missionary work does not interest her. The Professor goes to call by invitation, and takes his machine. What could be a better test of its powers than that she should talk Burmese into it ? She does talk Burmese, and, confident of his ignorance, rates him soundly for his obtuseness and tardiness. (He has explained that the machine develops the rhythm of foreign tongues.) All this reaches his delighted ears in the most intelligible English. What follows our readers may guess or find out. But could there be a happier effort of fancy ?
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