that extinct mammal, the grisette," is depicted on the cover
of this story, but Marge is by no means a grisette. She is, on the contrary, a being so entirely without moral sense that she quite cheerfully and remorselessly becomes a thief even in her earliest childhood. Her subsequent career is one of highly successful coups in the way of burglary, and so on, mostly undertaken with
the aid of two male accomplices. The story being told from the standpoint of its heroine, makes of theft an adventurous and courageous exploit, and is, therefore, likely to, do more harm than many books which are " immoral " in the sense conventional in fiction. The habitual criminal unfortunately exists, and his or her treatment is one of the most anxious social problems to be faced by any community, but the adventures of such an unfor- tunate are no fit subject for a sympathetic novel.
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