Tourmalin's Time Cheques

"Tourmalin's Time Cheques" is not a work on finance, as might be supposed by those who are unfamiliar with the name, F. Anstey, on the title-page of this handsome little book. For some strange reason Anstey is not very well known in America, perhaps because he is an English humorist and because Americans confound English humor with English wit. Speaking broadly, however, the one is as subtle as the other is stupid. Anstey's fun is of the Jerome K. Jerome order, but Jerome has no such genius for plots as is shown in " The Tinted Venus," "The Black Poodle, and Other Stories," and last, but not least, " Tourmalin's Time Cheques," the story of a traveler who made arrangements (or dreamed he did) to bank his spare time and then draw upon principal and interest of minutes and half-hours and days whenever he wanted them. The drafts drawn upon this fund of time gave him the adventures he would have had in the natural course of events. They were very puzzling adventures, because he had no knowledge of the events which preceded them. The publishers could not have opened their summer series of light reading with a more entertaining book.