Of all writers Mr. Wilde must be judged by his aim to be enjoyed. He is not a writer for the easily irritated, or the man who expects to order his novelists about like shopmen. People with strong preconceptions, and water-tight formulas may as well give him up at once. It is only people with bend in them, those who don't mind what he says so long as he says it piquantly, it is only those who "ever know the inmost shrine of Art"—as practised by Oscar Wilde. It is such an obliging reader who would venture to tell him that, with every admission, these stories must never be placed on the same shelf with "Dorian Gray," the "Intentions," the charming "Fairy Tales," or those early "Poems." That they can contain wit goes without saying, but then a story should be more than a succession of sparks; that the central ideas of the first and second—"The Sphinx without a Secret"—are comic is admitted, and the latter is certainly the best of the four; but Mr. Wilde has not been patient enough in his treatment. He has attempted burlesque—and burlesque a form now practised at present by many painstaking people, who thus earn

A PRECARIOUS LIVELIHOOD.

Mr. Wilde would not take the bread out of their mouths! No; he is too real a humorist to be allowed this descent to burlesque. We, his admirers, must sorrowfully, but firmly, forbid it. Let him give us a comedy, if he will—some more "Intentions," or another story-criticism like "The Portrait of Mr. W. H."; but no more "Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes." The reader may be curious as to what Lord Arthur's crime was. Well, being out one evening at Lady Windermere's he must perforce submit to examination by that lady's new lion a cheiromantist, Mr. Podgers. "Dear me, you are so original," had murmured the Duchess of Paisley, "trying to remember what a cheiromantist really was, and hoping it was not the same as a cheiropodist." Mr. Podgers, on examining "the hand," was noticed by Lord Arthur to turn pale, but he managed to smooth it over and give him a commonplace reading. However, come Podgers by himself, and offering him a big cheque, he extorted the truth.

MURDER

was written upon his hand. Lord Arthur became appropriately desperate, and felt at once that with such a doom menacing him it would be wrong for him to prolong his engagement with the lovely Sybil Merton. The only alternative, since the deed apparently must be done, was to get it over as soon as possible. It is hard, but it is duty, it is "for her sake." He thereupon makes two unsuccessful attempts on a dowager aunt and his venerable uncle the Dean of Chichester; but the deed being yet to do, he roams in deep dejection one night along the Thames Embankment. And, behold, there is Mr. Podgers leaning dreamily over the parapet. A brilliant idea comes to Lord Arthur. Quickly seizing him by the calves, he topples him over into the stream. A splash, a gurgle, a floating hat, and all is over. The prophet has thus fulfilled his own prophecy. An evening paper confirms the suicide of the famous cheiromantist, and his fate thus fulfilled, Lord Arthur, released at last, flies to the arms of his dear Sybil to offer her his future—now without a cloud. The point of the story is, of course, in its sub-title—"A Study of Duty."