SHORT STORIES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 83, 4 October 1930, Page 21

SHORT STORIES

PHILIP. GIBBS AND OTHERS

■ Ton short stories, all of the good magazine type, go. to make up "The Wings of Adventure" (Hutehinson and Co), the latest book of Sir Philip Gibbs, taking its title from the first story of the series—the fatal adventure of a Wilful girl. Skilful use is.raade of local colour, acquired in London, Paris, Salzburg, on the western front, and elsewhere, for ; the writer lias a highly developed faculty for observing men and things and places, as is to bo expected of t journalist with his reputation and .experience. "The Wings of Adventure" is an excellent bedtime book, and can be recommended as.an antidote to the .tedium of a, wearisome railway-journey. In the story "Aunt Kate, Queen Victoria," Sir Philip affords a glimpse of life as it used to be at Windsor during the sixty years' reign of the Queen,, and at the same time tells a' pretty and by no means improbable romantic story that, somehow, seems out of place with the other nine stories that go to the making of the-book.

Lovers of short,stories will find much to their taste, in the new volume by Alfred Tressider Sheppard, published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. The first,"Tuck-of-Drum," which gives the title to the book, concerns a veteran of Austerlitz, who, when the Germans threaten Paris in later years, makes, with two decrepit comrades, a gallant though useful stand on the bridge leading to their' own village. The other Btories deal with many different periods —ancient- and modern—different countries and different types of person, and all are interesting.. There is one which tells of a Portuguese rascal who; to scare .the people from his village so that he .may have a chance of stealing their goods, reports that he has seen the. French troops on their way to invade it. The people fly, as he anticipated, but even while he gathers up his loot :he finds that the words ho spoke were true, although he did not know it, and he. meets a miserable end owing to the fact that he is dressed in the Mayor's clothes, which ho has stolen. Mr. Sheppard thanks the late Mr.'St. ,John Adcock for selecting the stories for the book. So will the reader.

The famous author of "If Winter Comes" has eleven stories in "The Golden Pound." Verbosity, sentences of a hundred words or more, are their characteristic, but the author's whimsicality makes them very enjoyable, although in the first story about the girl at school who decides to celebrate her first speech-day by throwing a do~ghnut at someone on the platform, one cannot help wishing that the girl would hurry up and make her shot if she is really going to do it. There arc several delightful stories about naughty girls, but the: best and cleverest is "The Wicked Aunt," the story of a school-

girl who by a sister's marriage becomes another girl's aunt. This is exceedingly comical, and is told in the best HutchinsoH vein of humour.