A Woman Intervenes. By Robert Barr. (Chatto and Windus.)
—It is not once only that in Mr. Robert Barr's excellent story a woman intervenes." At first it is Miss Jennie Brewster, a young lady journalist attached to the staff of a New York paper, who is great in what may be called for the sake of brevity the work of a spy. At first we imagine that her art is to carry all before it. But there is another intervention, this time by Miss Edith Longworth, an Englishwoman, but not, as Mr. Barr some- what needlessly tells us, of the usual English type. It must be confessed indeed that Mr. Barr's characters are, for the most part, not of usual types, and that his incidents, though occurring on familiar planes of life, are of a somewhat romantic kind. But this does not hinder his tale from being of a really enjoyable kind. It is interesting, more than interesting, almost agitating. The scene when things come to a climax, and John Kenyon is waiting for the telegram which is to decide the lot of his partner and himself, is as powerful a thing in its way as anything that we have read. The subject-matter of the story is, we should say, mining speculation. We hope that such rascals as William Longworth are not very common in the speculating world. Mr. Barr can write well on many subjects. Here is a good thing about the Press. " Unbribable in the ordinary sense of the word, the Press will, for the accumulation of the smallest coins of the realm, exaggerate a cholera scare and paralyse the business of a nation; then it will turn on a corrupt Government and rend it, though millions might be made by taking another course. It is the terror of scoundrels and the despair of honest men."
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