A WISE MAN FOOLISH. By H. T. Hopkinson. (Chap- man
and Hall. 7s. 6d.)—Mr. Hopkinson begins his novel of village life in the middle of another story. He introduces us to a set of people who have been affected by a mysterious pedlar, who, years ago, came and went, leaving to one woman a son and to another one a legend. The legend was that the herb, wofury, which grew in a certain tarn, would give its gatherer power to read the past life of others and the present thoughts of their hearts. At the time when the story opens the pedlar has been gone for thirty years, but the women of the village are still expecting his return and his son is alter- nately repelling and attracting a certain farmer's daughter. Although the affair of the pedlar gives a brooding sense of mystery to the book, one cannot help feeling that the author would have done better without such a first-aid to fiction. His story of village life is interesting and convincing enough to need no props, attractive though these may be to the fantastic-minded.
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