Monthly Reviewed by Mr. Coolidge

The first piece in the current number of the Monthly, "The Wise Men," suffers from diffusion. It is what might be called a Christmas Mystery, and the fundamental idea is good. But the writer seems afraid to trust the reader's imagination to see al the points of analogy with the first Christmas story, and so burdens his piece with a large number of rather unconvincing characters, and an elaboration of stage setting and appropriate music. Contrast this with "the Littles Shepherd," which comes somewhat later on. The latter is perfectly simple, but sweet and true, leaving a delightful picture.

The most ambitious piece of verse is "Poet and Philistine." This is so long and circumstantial that one is tempted, forgetting the point, to look on it merely as an enumeration of fair women, and to exclaim "Yes, but you have forgotten Anne Hathaway and Manon Lescaut!" Among the other pieces of verse, the "Tempest" is worth mentioning.

The fiction is, as usual, of uneven merit. "The City of Hoggsville" and "Adin Ray Knight Errant" are slight, but distinctly amusing. "Room-mates" introduces a good situation, but the difficulty is not sufficiently explained by the subsequent appearance of a cheap and consumptive sister to the mysterious "mate." "A Hater of Pictures" is written, perhaps intentionally, in that racy style that one associates with tracts, but the denouement is cleverly concealed till the last sentence, and then it is so sudden that the it leaves the reader gasping.

One piece deserves special mention. Prairie Sunday" confessedly has neither plot nor point, but it is an utterly charming little sketch, strongly suggestive of Alphonse Daudet.