Two Argonauts in Spain. By Jerome Hart. (Longmans and Co.
5s. net.)—The Iolcos from which our Argonauts set sail was some port unnamed in the United States. It may be easily imagined, therefore, that they found a contrast between the country they left and the country which they reached. Yet they handsomely acknowledge that Spain is not behind the States in everything. You get better shad in Spain than you do in San Francisco; better plums also; it is not Nature that is in fault in either case, but man, man who will not get his fish fresh or grade his fruit. Such and such like are the subjects which our travellers discuss. Religion and politics they eschew, but dress and manners and climate and the ways of innkeepers, and the demeanour of audiences at the opera, and cigarette-smoking with its bearing on pneumonia. Don't wrap up and don't smoke too many cigarettes is the moral, if you wish to avoid the Spanish plague of pneumonia. It must not be supposed that Two Argonauts in Spain is a trifling book. Great subjects the author very properly avoids, but within his chosen range he is an acute observer, and has a way of putting what he says in a telling form.
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