_Up the Hill and Over_ (HURST AND BLAOKETT) was to write a convincing
tract for the times on a subject which is achieving unhappy prominence
in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not.
One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not
enough another is "out of her head," while a third, _Dr. Callandar_,
the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.
This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's
love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a _précis_)
which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I
have the absurd idea that this might really have begun life as a
pathological thesis and suffered conversion into a novel. The author
has no conscience in the matter of the employment of the much-abused
device of coincidence. And I don't think the story would cure anyone
of drug-taking. On the contrary.

* * * * *

_The Three Black Pennys_ (HEINEMANN) is a story that began by
perplexing and ended by making a complete conquest of me. Its
author, Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER, is, I think, new to this side of
the Atlantic; the publishers tell me (and, to prevent any natural
misapprehension, I pass on the information at once) that he belongs
to "a Pennsylvania Dutch family, settled for many generations in
Philadelphia." Which being so, one can enjoy his work with a free
conscience. It certainly seems to me very unusual in quality. The
theme of the tale is the history of the _Penny_ family, or rather
of the periodical outcrop in it of a certain strain that produces
_Pennys_ dark of countenance and incalculable of conduct. This
recurrence is shown in three examples: the first, _Howart Penny_,
in the days when men wore powder and the _Penny_ forge had just