_Penelope_ was the heroine. She was in what are called reduced circumstances, and was moreover encumbered by sisters who were not quite all that could have been wished in the way of niceness. One day _Penelope_, looking through an iron gate, saw a beautiful garden, full of flowers; and the master of the garden, himself unseen, saw _Penelope_, and loved her. So she accepted the invitation of his voice and went into the garden and found that the master was a young man so disfigured by a recent accident that he had to wear blue spectacles and a shade. However, he loved her and she didn't mind him, so that after a time they became engaged, which was pleasant enough for _Penelope_, who had henceforth the run of the garden and leave to take home roses and things to the not-nice sisters. Do you want to be told how presently these began to tempt _Penelope_, urging her to insist that her lover should unmask, and what happened when she yielded? Or have you seen already that the story here called _A Garden of the Gods_ (Alston Rivers) is just a modern version of one that we all used to be told in the nursery? Moreover, Beauty and the Beast had been used once at least in this fashion before Miss Edith M. Keate happened on the idea. But that does not make the present any the less an amiable, quietly entertaining story, if a little obvious. The characters have never anything but a very distant resemblance to life; and their speech is for the most part that of a lady novelist's creations rather than of human beings. But those who demand "a good tale," with beauty properly distressed till the last page, and there beatified with the knowledge that "the darkness that surrounded her was scattered for ever," will find some highly agreeable pasturage in _A Garden of the Gods_.
_The Modern Chesterfield_ (Hurst and Blackett) is a book that I enjoyed only after overcoming a considerable and partially-justified prejudice. In the first place, I generally dislike stories told in epistolary form; in the second, I almost always detest books that their publishers advertise by selected "smart sayings." But I must honestly admit that _The Modern Chesterfield_ conquered me--chiefly, I think, by its good-nature. The writer of these very up-to-date paternal admonitions is supposed to be one _Sir Benjamin Budgen, Bart_, "of Budgen House, Fleet Street, E.C. and Cedar Court, Twickenham, Middlesex." The addresses tell you what to expect--a satire on the methods of popular journalism. This in fact is what you get, but the satire is so neat (and withal so genial) and Mr. Max Rittenberg has so happy a knack of conveying character in a few lines that you are simply bound to enjoy reading him. One other facility he has that deserves the highest praise: he tells his story, in letters that emanate from one side only, without wearisome repetition. There is, I mean, hardly any of that "You say in your last that--and ask me whether--etc.," which in similar volumes always bores me to ill-temper by its unlikeness to the letter-writing customs of real life. An explanatory line or two at the head of each epistle puts you in possession of the facts--that _Norman_, the son to whom they are written, has left Cambridge, is proving unsatisfactory, has married an Earl's daughter, and so on. That known, the letters tell their own tale. They reveal the writer too (I refer to _Sir Benjamin_): shrewd, clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters that overwhelm him in the end do not leave his readers unmoved; bankrupt and beaten he goes down fighting with the final characteristic wire, in response to a suggestion of compromise by his chief enemy, "Surrender be damned." A little book to enjoy.