One wonders whether the "movies" have not had an adverse effect upon the pursuit of the literary art. The stories in a dozen current magazines read if they had been ginally drafted for "movie" scenarios, and, upon rejection, had been filled out just enough to make them pass muster as stories. There is as little coherence of plot as in most "movie" narratives; as little regard for the development of character, truthfulness of motive; and as little respect for the probabilities in regard to geography, dress, and deportment. Transmission is a lost art; the preparation of the reader's mind is ignored; and attention to such details as sentence structure, choice of words, and artistic treatment of episodes is entirely outside the writer's calculations. The whole object seems to be motion. Everybody moves. Everything moves. Bonds are stolen from safes and replaced there before night police men come off their beats. Rich uncles transfer their affections and fortunes five or six times between page three and "continued on page 37." Languorous, sensuous palmists, fresh from the country and in the employ of grasping, card-catalog syndicates become over night the trusted detectives of a world-famous bureau and walk straight into the thief's apartment before his Japanese servant has had time to dust the stolen bonds where they were thrown down in their $300,000 splendor on the desk. The heroine stays out all night in a broken-down automobile with the man she is not engaged to and forgets to pay the providential chauffeur who passes by and rescues her. 