Page 15 Advertisements Column 1

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18551, 28 November 1925, Page 15

A quaint conceit by E. Dorset in the '.'Literary Review": Grant me one superstition; I may -walk Beneath a thousand ladders, greet a hearse, Put on my shoes for Colluinkyne's' rapt curse; Regard the moon all wrong-wise, freely talk. And never fare, it seems, one whit the worse. I,'have embarked on Fridays; jinxed a game. And much have stirred my coffee withershins; Have trod on crickets, taking no great blame, Attacked by critics, feeling much the same; Turned back on missions, not retrieved lost pins. My superstition's this (I "set the ban!); I do not bring collapse with evil eyes, But this I note with ever-fresh surprise— Soon as I learn enough of any man To envy him, I hear that that man dies. Stanley J. Weyman (favourite modern romancer) may be. idted as a proof of the impossibility of the born storyteller really abandoning his art. After giving up law for literature Mr Weyman produced just a score of fine romances, beginning with "The House of the Wolf' in 1890, and ending wITtl "The Wild Geese," in 1908, and on the publication of the latter announced he would write no more. For eleven years he kept his vow, but at last the literary impulse prevailed apain, and during the last five years, to fSe joy of his innumerable admirers, he has added four more volumes to his list, the last, "Qaeen*s Folly," just published. ■