The November Monthly.

I learned the other day that it is common in newspaper offices to have what is called a "style book." This is a pamphlet containing not only the special technical rules for the preparation of copy for the particular journal, but also lists of words and phrases which are thought to have served their time and to have earned a rest. It occurs to me in reading the new issue of the Monthly that it might be of advantage if something of the sort were compiled for the contributors to the college papers. Generations of undergraduates replace one another so rapidly that it is no fault of the newcomers if they are ignorant how worn are many of the terms that delight them with their novelty and fitness. How much fresher and more individual would critical articles in the Monthly be if authors were forbidden to use such terms as these, selected from a single article in the current number: "Finely critical," "sensuous couplets," "instinctive felicity," "subtilely conscious," "meretricious!" What a relief if we should never again meet the parenthetic "then" near the beginning of a Harvard sentence!

Not that the new issue sins more grievously than its predecessors in this respect. Of the two pieces of criticism here published, that by S. Hale has no more than the usual amount of literary slang, and if most of what he has to say of William Watson's poetry is fairly obvious, it is at least clearly thought out. W. A. Green's "The Versatile Mr. Kipling," is less satisfactory. He is guilty of saying that "in 'Gentleman Rankers' there is a more serious turn of finality" than in "the whimsically pathetic protest of 'Tommy'." If the Monthly had had a style book. Mr. Green would have been forced to tell us what he really meant. Now we shall never know.

The stories are better. In "The Elixir" O. Bates has a weird idea, which he handles with rapidity and effect. H. Hagedorn's story is interesting, and would have deserved more space if the author had been ambitious to tell us more of the internal processes of the mind of the villain.

The worst thing about "Dearth" is its title. In "The Witch-Child," by H. A. Bellows, the old ballad theme of "Kemp Owyne" is treated in a manner suggested by a familiar poem by Keats--a sufficiently ambitious attempt which might have been more disastrous than it is.

"Concerning an Elective System" is an attempt at satire, containing an unfortunate mistake in taste. The editorial paragraphs, devoted to football matters are sensible and restrained. The suggestions as to songs, especially, are practical and to the point, and it will be a pity if they are not acted on by the mysterious authorities who govern such matters.

The proof-reading should be better.