JOTS AND TITLES

Margery Allingham, the eighteen-year-old novelist whose first book, "Black'er-chief Dick", published by Doubleday, Page & Company, is a swaggering pirate tale of Restoration England, claims as literary godfather the novelist, William McFee. Since her first publishing venture. "The Wag-tail," a magazine written in a penny exercise book for which McFee was foreign correspondent and eight-year-old Margery managing editor, writer of the editorial, short story, serial, answers to correspondents and advertisements, the older writer has followed her career with friendly interest.

Margery's grandparents were publishers and her parents writers of fiction, so, it was as natural for the little girl to sit down and "write a story" as for a shopkeeper's child to play to keeping shop. The philosophy of art and the technical problems of serial fiction were commonplaces of the domestic atmosphere. But when a young lady of eighteen writes a novel in four months and calmly asserts that it came to her out of the air, communicated by so-called automatic writing, the average grownup hesitates, comments McFee. Yet if one knows, the road from Colchester to Mersea where the whole coast at high tide is compacted of lonely islands, "of a quiet loveliness in summer with salt winds driving thick white clouds athwart a sky of palest azure," he has come close to England.

"In such surrounding", on a fare of beef and cheese and beer, an English family might conceivably become so homogeneously identified with the spirit of the place that they could move at will up and down the centuries, assuming the thoughts and memories of any disembodied intelligences still anchored to their earthly haunts."

Being one of those wistful and perpetual prospects against whom the "Own Your Own Home" campaign is directed, we read the National Real Estate Journal with thoughtful care. It seems that the ultimate word in salesmanship, according to the current issue of the Journal, is to "reduce sales-resistance by analyzing your buyer's library." If he reads Harold Bell Wright and Zane Grey, solid comfort and respectability are his first requirements, but if his library contains Conrad, Henry James. Balzac, and De Morgan, the salesman must use the utmost discrimination, as his desire for a distinctive home with beautiful and harmonious surroundings will be limited only by his income. We wonder if the research managers of large real-estate corporations furnish their young salesmen with charts something like this:

"If the prospect's library contains any of the following books, show him the type of home dwelling listed opposite.

Christopher Morley--Small, Tudor English, old, ivy-covered, must have good kitchen and large fireplace that draws.

Booth Tarkington-Not too modern town house, well-kept-up, trim lawn, hospitable porches comfortable servants' quarters.

Gene Stratton Porter-Bungalow, sun parlor, well-planned kitchen, laundry and nursery, flower boxes, trees.

Joseph Conrad--Far horizons, a vista of the sea, broken roof lines, high hedges.

Walter Camp has incorporated in "A Pocket Bridge Book," which Doubleday, Page & Company have just published, many bridge proverbs which have the weight and wisdom of bitter experience. These are a few of them:

"Most auction players may be divided into five classes-confirmed overbidders, cautious passers, insane doublers, rabid raisers, and winners, and the first four support the fifth in luxury.

"Partner--Someone who plays not accurately but with wonderful expression.

"The Bid--With many players is the triumph of imagination over facts.

"Declaration--With many people not necessarily the impossible but certainly the improbable.

Dummy--The kind friend who raises your bid of one up to four with four small trumps and no outside trick.

"Lack of perception in a partner is worse than jack of principle."