Chapter 4

After reading _The Searchers_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), I seriously think of myself joining His Britannic Majesty's Secret Service. All the fun and firearms, and ever, at the conclusion, a startling surprise for your friends and admirers, among whom you stand cool, calm and collected. _Anthony Keene-Leslie_ did not deceive me when, upon his first introduction as a secret servant, he modestly disclaimed the thrills and excitements commonly attributed to his trade. I knew that many pages would not be turned before he would land us in the middle of some crimson intrigue; mysterious strangers, disguises, cryptic and invaluable manuscripts, urgent telegrams, codes, Italian hidden hands, Scotland Yard, pseudo-taxicabs, clues and things. But let others beware of Mr. JOHN FOSTER, a most ingenious manipulator of the old stock-in-trade and possessing a rare sense of humour. For the reader to pit his wits against the author's is, in this instance, to be completely "had" and to become under the necessity (about page 265) of taking off his hat, not only to the secret servant but to a mere minion of the "Yard" also. Two minor points emerge from a close study of the book. The first is that the author is undoubtedly a barrister himself; if I am wrong on this point I finally withdraw my threat to join the Service. The second point is that he knows his Scotland even as well as he loves it. In the result you have two merits, which together amply discount the element of cheap sensationalism: one merit is the logical development of the story, and the other is its beautiful setting. I don't know whether it is due to the Scottish climate or to the legal atmosphere that the author omits all reference to the feminine sex or affairs of the heart; but anyhow it seemed right and meet that women should be left at home when men were engaged upon such violent and dastardly business.

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From certain internal evidences, mainly orthographical, I am led to suppose _The Branding Iron_ (CONSTABLE) to be of Transatlantic origin. This, no doubt, explains my unfamiliarity with the name of Miss KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT, also certain minor points, notably the fact that the story, though by no means badly told, suffers from what I can only call a plethora of plot. As I followed the developments of its intrigue and tracked the heroine from untutored savage, wife of the wild Westerner whose excusable suspicions caused him to brand her as private property, to the moment of her triumph as the bejewelled idol of theatrical New York, the conviction grew upon me that here was a tale surely predestined to be the screen that covers a multitude of melodramatics. Presently indeed the suggestion became so insistent that I went further and began to wonder whether I was not in fact reading a "story-form" of some already triumphant film. Certainly the resemblance is almost too pronounced to be fortuitous; from the sensational branding scene, through cowboy stunts, to the up-town playhouse, where a repentant and wife-seeking hero recognises his mark upon the shoulder of the leading lady--and so to reconciliation, slow fade-out, and the announcement of Next Week's Pictures. But though it is impossible not to suspect Miss BURT of having an eye to what poetic journalism calls the Shadow Stage, this is by no means to belittle her mastery of the colder medium of print; and I hasten to acknowledge that, upon me at least, _The Branding Iron_ has left a distinct though possibly fleeting impression of good entertainment.

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CANE OR BIRCH?

"House Porter wanted, to live in or out, able to manage beating apparatus.--Apply, Stating wages required, to Headmaster, ----- school."--_Local Paper_.

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"The total cost of the British delegation to the Peace Conference at Paris from December, 1918, to 31st September was £503,368."--_Liverpool Paper_.

But it is only fair to say that in the last month they seem to have put in a bit of overtime.