Ile Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. By Jerome K.
Jerome. (Hurst and Blackett. 3s. Cd.)—The humour of Mr. Jerome's Second Thoughts playmeleggt„4,413,,time-lionoured topics of the social philosopher and moralist, making some good points, and very-much overdoing some others. The weaknesses of woman, the inconsistencies of man, the equalities of life masquing as inequalities, the difficulty of knowing one's own character, the wearisomeness of being bound up for life in one unchangeable identity, the folly of following advice, the virtues of the publican, the vices of the pharisee,—these are the aspects of life handled by Mr. Jerome from a standpoint of mingled sympathy and satire. It is rather to be regretted that the writer limits his studies of human nature too exclusively to the bourgeois plane of existence ; also, that some of the fun he pokes at his fellow-mortals is a little out of date. This is particularly the case when Mr. Jerome is amusing at the expense of women; he seems to ignore the fact of the emancipation of the sex by education, omnibus, and bicycle, and to think of woman as a creature still incurably petty, affectionate, stay-at-home, and agreeably illogical and incom- petent. The sketch of the shopping lady hesitating between the red gown and the grey, with which the book opens, is delightful, and, we fear—we bad almost said, we hope—still true to life. But the study of " How a Woman Goes Out," though not less amusing, cannot be said to apply to modern life. And this is a pity, for—anachronism though it be—it somehow hits off with humorous felicity a very real difference between the way in which a man goes out and the way in which a woman does the same thing. There is a difference—a difference that no social revolution will probably ever quite obliterate—but in these days when all the world is continually going in and out, it is preposterous to make a two days' notice and hesitation part of a normal woman's quite unimportant outing. The chapter on "Things we Meant to Do" is very good, though the egg-box mania may perhaps be just a little exaggerated. And we are struck by the originality of the Frenchman's idea of a future life, in which " two or three or four of us, according to our intrinsic value, would be combined to make a new and more
important individuality fitted for a higher existence The man of the future, he will be made up of many men—the courage of one, the wisdom of another, the kindliness of a third.
Take a City man say the Lord Mayor ; add to him a poet, say Swinburne ; mix them with a religious enthusiast, say General Booth. There you will have the man fit for the higher life."
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