ABSTRACT
The period ofMr Gissing's latest story might be computed from direct internal evidence. 'Come Where the Booze is Cheaper' was then a popular refrain, and the great missing-word competition is the divine gift from the wittily worked machine which enables the people to sort themselves out in pairs at the end. An antiquarian of the future might also, if he had lost the title-page, restore its date as 1898, on account of the leading fact of the story, the identity of the vanishing husband with a peer of the realm. But that might only be a lucky accident; at any rate, if a certain famous case gave Mr Gissing the idea, there is no further similarity between that case and the ingenious and delightfully funny story woven round 'Mr Clover.' Mr Gissing does not need to be topical to be actual; to say that a tale is by him is to say that its period is very much now, and its scene very much here, in the London where they sell cricket extras and pull up the Strand.
