'The Notion-Counter' in Vienna

‘ Und wenn du deinen eigenen Namen in meineni Addresshuch nachsehen willst, lieber Algernon,’sagte sie mit gleisnerischer Liebenswürdigkeit, ’dann denke an den tauben Tapezierer und suche unter E.'

Is there any faithful reader of the Atlantic or of The Notion-Counter who will recognize in these strange words the conclusion of ‘My Wife’s Address-Book’? Such it is — in a German translation of portions of the little anonymous volume published last spring and reviewed with a flattering seriousness by Professor Leon Kellner, of Vienna, in the Neue Freic Pressc of that city for October 21, 1922. Indeed there has been no more searching a consideration of the book in any American journal. ‘The wit of this humorist,’ says the reviewer,

‘ lies precisely in the fact that she hides her wit behind her humor — Ars est celare artem,' Many another warmly appreciative phrase might be quoted in translation, but there is space only for the opening words of the notice—words in which a certain pathos predominates: ‘If this little book performs no other service than to make the German reader laugh against his will and forget for a few hours the unhappy world of the present, it will be worth while to make it known to wider circles.’