Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/163

Rh red lips, like a young squirrel among the fallen leaves of autumn'!

Of one of Mr. Caine's novels, however, The Deemster, it is impossible for me to speak otherwise than with gratitude. I have not yet read it all, but I carry it about with me from place to place in this sunny, dusty, rainy, draughty, malodorous Riviera, where the exiled invalids of England dissipate their pessimistical winters. The Deemster broke up one of the most persistent attacks of insomnia that I have ever experienced. Through it I enjoyed night after night of sound and refreshing slumber. I let my stock of sulphonal tablets run out with a reckless unconcern. What did it matter? I had The Deemster. But this, I am aware, is a merely personal view of the matter, and we must mournfully admit that to our disinterested friend of Literature, and his species, there is no consolation possible for the literary existence of Mr. Hall Caine.

Yet even when one passes from this merely factitious and transitional branch of English fiction to the exiguous domain of better and more serious work, one is met too often with the barrenest results. The noisy popular success stands usually as an aching minus quantity, but the only less noisy half-success gives us again and again little more than zero. Sadly we perceive that it really amounts to