The Modern Adam ; or, How Things are Done. By
Arthur W. A'Beckett. (Hurst and Blackett. 3s. 6d.)—Under the title of The Modern Adam Mr. A'Beckett publishes a series of sketches satirising the machinery of contemporary life. The greater number of the papers have already appeared in Punch, and their humour is of the kind that is more enjoyable in small doses than in a full feast. The book professes to teach us how to prepare speeches for all sorts of occasions, parochial, municipal, Parlia- mentary, domestic, and convivial ; how to write every kind of book, play, and song ; how to start and conduct journals and magazines; how to write begging-letters, and how to answer them. The most successful pages are the concluding ones, which are devoted to the cross-examination of experts giving evidence upon fashionable entertainments and amusements. A special attack is made, in the last sketch of all, on the detestable fashion of ladies attending trials for murder, for the sake of the excite- ment or "the fun" to be got out of them.
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