Shorter Notices
WEEK-END books are always popular, and most popular of all when found in the guest's bedroom on the bedside bookshelf. They are full of practical matter, but whether they are ever put to the uses for which their writers compiled them is doubtful. What, then, is the reason for their popularity? Probably because they pander to our love of day-dreaming. There is nothing nicer, for the normal lazy human creature, than to sit, preferably in comfort, and enjoy a thoroughly busy book. The latest addition to the series should prove specially successful, for it contains almost everything—from planting bulbs to bringing up the children—that one could possibly wish to read about doing. Miss Irving also explores the customs of our ancestors, and these historical passages are full and lively. But she is al all times free from a vulgar attachment to present troubles. Her domestic chapter begins : "Suppose you awake one morning to the ghastly realisation that for some reason or other there are no servants today." Perhaps after all it is in dealing with the present that her sense of the past is at its strongest.
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