a
very modern and scientific answer. It is the story of a woman
who, after her husband's disgrace and death, settles with her
only daughter upon the shore of one of the Italian lakes. The
girl grows up in ignorance of her family history, but when the
inevitable young man appears complications begin. As it happens,
Sir George, the father of the lover, holds the old-fashioned
cast-iron doctrine of heredity, and the story shows the conflict
between his pedantry and the compulsion of fact. It is a book
full of serious interest for all readers, and gives us in
addition a charming love story. Mrs. Clifford has drawn many
delightful women, but Kitty and her mother must stand first in
her gallery.

PRESTER JOHN. _John Buchan._

This is a story which, in opposition to all accepted canons of
romance, possesses no kind of heroine. There is no woman from
beginning to end in the book, unless we include a little Kaffir
serving-girl. The hero is a Scottish lad, who goes as assistant
to a store in the far north of the Transvaal. By a series of
accidents he discovers a plot for a great Kaffir rising, and by
a combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From
beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of
the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the
incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By
means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the
ruby collar which for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he
organizes the natives of Southern Africa into a great army. But
a revolution depends upon small things, and by frustrating the
leader in these small things, the young storekeeper wins his way
to fame and fortune. It is a book for all who are young enough
in heart to enjoy a record of straightforward adventure.

LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING. _"Q."_

Sir Oliver Vyell, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, is the British
Collector of Customs at the port of Boston in the days before the
American Revolution. While there he runs his head against New
England Puritanism, rescues a poor girl who has been put in the
stocks for Sabbath-breaking, carries her off, and has her educated.
The story deals with the development of Ruth Josselin from a
half-starved