Edward Bacedale's Will. By Mark Hardy. (Mills and Boon. 6s.)—It
is a great pity that Mr. Hardy should have chosen to turn his energies and powers to the writing of a story so extravagant and fantastical as Edward Racedale's Will, where the plot is woven round the signing of his will, in a moment of idle amusement, by the young heir to an estate, who bequeaths his whole fortune to the housemaid ; who then, all forgetful of the will, and weary of the persistent inter- ference of his relatives, departs on foreign travel, and leaves behind him the rumour of his suicide, thus reducing his whole family to poverty, and driving his uncle to take service as butler under the late housemaid. We say it is a pity, not because Mr. Hardy does not do it well—as a matter of fact, he does it exceedingly well—but because he might do something much better. His delightful sense of humour, and his way of investing with sublime importance the most trivial domestic situations, would be better employed in a comedy of real life and real people, and we could wish that he would free himself from this extravagance and from a certain affectation which infects his dialogue with the rather superficial brilliancy of an American farce. But at least we are grateful to him for his introductory first chapter, where, as we wander about the garden of the Hall, which " was devoted almost exclusively to the use of the Unemployed," we meet, one after the other, the six unemployed—the members of the Racedale family : this, with its pleasant excitement of fresh discoveries, is surely an admirable way of bringing forward his puppets upon the stage.
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