WHEN Mr. Hemingway's novel, "The Sun Also Rises," was recognized and praised by critics not only for its powerful theme, but also for the simplicity of its style, there was no reason to take exception to general opinion. But when Mr. Hemingway disregards entirely one side of his work, as he has done with several of the short stories in "Winner Take Nothing," we are inclined to think that he has been overestimated as a stylist.

In "A Way You'll Never Be," and in "A Natural History of the Dead," which is an excerpt from the prolix thesis on bull-fights, "Death In The Afternoon," Hemingway is bitter, and by no means at his best. "One Reader-Writes" is a letter from a young woman to a doctor columnist in which she asks him if her husband can ever be well after having "sifllus." After completing the letter she moans, saying to herself: "I wish to Christ he hadn't got any kind of malady. I don't know why he had to get a malady." This is an example of Hemingway at his worst, the sort of thing that is generally associated with his imitators or with an elementary college composition course.

"One time a fellow comes here to me and said he wanted me to cook them a big supper and they drink one, two bottles of wine, and their girls come too, and then they go to the dance. All right, I said. So I made a big supper, and when they come already they drank a lot. Then they put whiskey in the wine. My God, yes. I said to Fontan, 'On va etre malade!' 'Oui,' il dit. Then these girls were sick, nice girls, too, all-right girls. They were sick right at the table. Fontan tried to take them by the arm and show them where they could be sick all right in the cabinet, but the fellows said no, they were all right there at the table."

The preceding paragraph contains the acute observations of Madame Fontan on American drinkers in Wyoming. In "Wine of Wyoming," Ernest Hemingway has given a picture of a French couple who earned their living by selling homemade wine and beer at a time when prohibition agents were enforcing the law. Yet it contains some of Hemingway's more humorous lines, for he is wholly at home with these people and recognizes each trait which will amuse an American.

"The Gambler, The Nun, And The Radio," which appeared in Scribner's Magazine last spring, is an asset to this collection. It commences in a mad vein but turns rapidly into a dud when the author gets the inspiration toward the end to take several of the characters seriously. This lapse, however, is excusable. Gaetano, the gambler, is an unusual character; Sister Cecilia is the practical nun who prays for Notre Dame in the big game. There is no plot, there are few situations; its virtues may only be ascribed to Mr. Hemingway's consummate technique of making something from nothing.

Ernest Hemingway's last story in "Winner Take Nothing," is "Fathers And Sons." If not the most original it is at least the most refreshing story in the collection. In this, the author is not satirical, nor is he bitter. The dialogue is terse, but not disconnected. Though Mr. Hemingway is openly sentimental in the sketch of Nicholas Adams's youth, his writing in this story is at his best. Perhaps he will continue to write without the pseudo-hard-boiled veneer which has pervaded most of his short stories in the past. "Fathers And Sons" was the last of the collection; we hope it was the last that he wrote, and that he will continue with more like it. G. W. C.

Stephen Leacock, the astounding fellow who possesses both a Professorship in Economics and what some people have seen fit to term a sense of humor, has completed a magnum opus, a life of Charles Dickens, which is to be published on November 16. It is something of a shock to consider the name Leacock in connection with a serious work. It will be interesting to note whether that shock interferes with an appreciation of the work.