r quite precisely gathered
what was "the dwelling-place of light." Anyway it wasn't the
Chippering Mill ... But I was sorry when I reached the four hundred
and ninth and last of the closely-set pages. Good measure for a book
in war-time.

* * * * *

Throughout a vagabond career that began in happiness on a farm and
finished, thankfully, amongst the fields, _Frank Rainger_ followed
always the pathway of the broader experience. Followed it so stoutly
and was such good company on the long road that whether it was high
holiday at Cranbrook Circus with _Maggie Coalbran_, or a fight for
the hopeless cause of the Southern States in shell-torn Vicksburg, or
only the keeping of eternal lazy summer with the peons of Yucatan, I
was altogether content to go humbly forward with him, convinced that,
as it was written, so and no otherwise should it be. Even when he
deservedly failed to become a shining light in the literary firmament
to which he aspired--an unheard-of piece of audacity on the part
of his authoress--I did not rebel. Miss SHEILA KAYE SMITH has an
essential clarity of visualisation, a deep and still reserve of
unforced pathos and an exquisite sense of the haunting word, that
combine with a most competent alertness of movement to make her latest
artistic success, _The Challenge to Sirius_ (NISBET), a book for which
I can hardly find adequate words of praise. Most admirable of all,
perhaps, is a strange faculty she has shown for making one satisfied
that her people should remain perennially rather poor and unambitious
and dull, and should even grow old without occasioning us regret.
With the deep under-drift of the writer's philosophy one may not be
completely in accord, but certainly it will worry nobody, while the
unity and beauty of her methods hold one in willing bondage from
beginning to end. This is real literature, and everyone should
read it.

* * * * *

Without any very exceptional gifts as a story-teller Fleet-Surgeon
T.T. JEANS, R.N., scores heavily off most writers of boys' adventure
tales by having actually lived the life he describes. Here, for
instance, in _A Naval Venture_ (BLACKIE) we do get the real thing,
and boys would be well-advised to sample it and see if it is not
preferable to the kind of adventurous fiction produced so prolifically
for their amusement. Not that this yarn is lacking in adventure;
indeed it is concerned with the Gal