"Winner Take Nothing."

Ernest Hemingway

This book has nothing to do with a local commercial school or the futility of passing exams, but is a volume of short stories of the unconventional type Hemingway is an American consmopolitan with a Latin outlook, and consequently there is no trace of moralisation in his stories. To those unfamiliar with his work, his sustained subjectivity may be a little disconcerting and his staccato style condemned as affectation. A further examination will show, however, that his economy of words is most forcible. The fact that his characters in their utterances confine themselves to single sentences and often repeat themselves, may seem unreal: but there is no denving its significance in driving home the author's point. The slightness, or total back of plot, may be disapproved of on the grounds of obscurity, and in "The Sea Change" the charge would be justifiable, but elsewhere it will have to be conceded that this heightens the effect of realism. This effect is best portrayed in "A Way You'll Never Be"—the revelation of the mind of a shellshock case A vein of sly humour runs through nearly all the stories and in some amounting to subtle irony as exemplified in "The Homage to Switzerland,"—O.A.E.H.

"The stork is a very valuable bird,

Inhabiting all sorts of districts.

Though it doesn't yield plumes

Or sing any tunes.

It helps out with the vital statistics."