the Life-Line" even while he is reducing me to an emotional crumple? I refuse to admit that I am incapable of that same arid and exquisite æstheticism; but the lower appeal reaches me too. I do weep over the brass bands. I do choke over the flag appropriately carried. I do fall in love (if I am careful to shut my eyes) with a good tenor voice. And while there are, luckily, a great many people like my husband, there must be millions more like me. He remembers the Gospel Hymns; but I like them.

Not quite to the trail-hitting point; but then I fancy the hymns of the tabernacle are less good than they used to be. I do not know the tune of "Brighten the Corner Where You Are." Though my six-year-old son has learned it from the cook, I do not believe he has the tune right. He cannot have it right: if it were right, there would be no sawdust trail. Nor do I know the music of "The Brewer's Big Horses Cannot Roll Over Me." But I have a suspicion that Billy Sunday's hymns are nothing like so good as Moody and Sankey. The dance music of the day always has its effect. on popular airs of every kind, even religious. I venture to say (pace the shade of Lord Byron) that the waltz, throughout the nineteenth century, had a strong religious influence. Every one knows that good waltz music, if played slowly enough, is the saddest thing in the world. The emotion aroused by good waltz

music well played is blood-brother to the emotion aroused by "God Be with You Till We Meet Again" and "For You I Am Praying, I'm Praying for You." Waltzes and Gospel Hymns reinforce each other-which is probably why the unco' guid object to dancing. But with all due allowances for mob-emotion and the sensual ear, I cannot believe that syncopation serves the Lord. People's eyes do not grow dim as they listen to a fox-trot. It does nothing to bring forth that melting sense of universal love which the old popular music did. All waltz music was in essence melancholy; and all sentimental melancholies meet together somewhere in the recesses of the vulgar heart. Yes: when popular composers were writing good waltzes, it was easier for the Sankeys and Blisses to write good hymns. The Y. P. S. C. E. must have had easier work with the young people who were singing "Marguerite," than it has now with the young people who are singing "At the Garbage Gentlemen's Ball." I have a notion that the young people who are singing "At the Garbage Gentlemen's Ball" do not go to Y. P. S. C. E. meetings at all. Well, you see, those who sang "Marguerite" did.

Those who know say that we are growing more vulgar all the time. Perhaps the difference between D. L. Moody and Billy Sunday is a good index of that degeneration. Cer

tainly the silly young things who wept while they sang "God Be with You Till We Meet Again" would not have pretended to call Christ up on the telephone or have permitted any one else to do it in their presence. But, thank Heaven, the conventicles are like to outlast the tabernacle.

At all events, I am sure of one thing: that my husband will not be persuaded, twenty years hence, to "oblige" with "The Brewer's Big Horses." But I hope he will continue at intervals to oblige with "Throw Out the LifeLine." For, so long as he does, I shall continue to be evangelized.

I

BRITISH NOVELISTS, LTD.

WAS reading a novel, the other day; had

got about half way through it. The novel

in question was by one of the younger English authors. It was very odd, I thought to myself as I perused it, that I should not (for I read a great deal of fiction) have read before anything by Mr. D. H. Lawrence. I had always meant to, but his work had, for some reason or other, not come my way. And I was glad I was reading it. I ought to have done D. H. Lawrence before. Some people had told me he was "different." He was not so different as all that; still, there was something fresh about him. Perhaps one could differentiate within that group, though I had long since despaired of doing so. I would certainly get something else of D. H. Lawrence's. At that point I decided to go to bed, and shut the book up smartly. The cover revealed to me that the author was J. D. Beresford. Why I had ever thought it was D. H. Lawrence, I do not know. Some false association of ideas at the moment of borrowing it, probably.

The joke is on me, as the younger generation would say. And yet, there is something to be said on my side. The fact is that I had not

expected D. H. Lawrence to be one whit different from Hugh Walpole, J. D. Beresford, Compton Mackenzie, Gilbert Cannan, Oliver Onions, and W. L. George. I found, I thought, a little difference: not much, but enough to give one hope. To be sure, the hope would have ebbed, in any case, before the book was finished. My only gain was the knowledge that Mr. Beresford can do something besides Jacob Stahl. I have yet to experience D. H. Lawrence. Still, I submit that when, to distinguish between one author and another, you are satisfied with so tiny a difference in style as appears between two works by the same man, it means that differences in style within that particular group are not very startling. One would never have read half of Tess and taken it for the work of Henry James; or half of Nostromo and taken that for the work of Meredith. One would have been brought up standing at the first page. It may be, as I say, that D. H. Lawrence is going to be to me, some day, a revelation of individuality. But the reviews do not give one much hope of that.

Now, there are three authors in England who stand a little away from this larger group, though they are not precisely contemporaries of Hardy or of Conrad. Wells and Bennett and Galsworthy have some individuality of style. A chapter of Mr. Wells is "different." A chapter of Arnold Bennett or of Mr. Galsworthy is dif