Books: Skeptic on the Loose

SATAN IN THE SUBURBS AND OTHER STORIES (148 pp.)—Bertrand Russell—Simon & Schuster ($3).

Penelope's papa was a Church of England clergyman "of a type now nearly extinct, low church, bigoted, and opposed to every kind of enjoyment." Ecclesiastes was his Bible; when Penelope spoke to a stranger, her father rebuked her in his own didactic paraphrases, saying: "If thy daughter be shameless, keep her in straitly." He refused her a piano ("Wine and music will rejoice the heart, but the love of wisdom is above them both") and kept her from the village...