of the War. Not until the last page does he abandon the
jest to explain--with something of a school-boy grin--just where fact and
fiction meet, and so enable me to recover from my bewilderment and pass on
a word of warning. Once on your guard, however, you will find his story of
the _Servants of the Guns_ (SMITH, ELDER), and more especially the first
half of it (dealing, in diary form, with his recent adventures as an
officer of Artillery--he does not state his present rank), as vivid and
real as anything of the sort you have seen. Field-gun warfare of
to-day--mathematics, telephones and mud--with little more of old-time dash
and jingle than the hope that some to-morrow may revive them in the Great
Pursuit--this is his theme; and above all the loyalty of the gunner to his
guns. Even the story-book part in the middle of the volume speaks of this
finely and movingly; but here and there amongst his personal experiences
comes a passage less consciously composed that tells it even better in the
bareness of a great simplicity.

* * * * *

Mr. J.D. BERESFORD'S new story, _House-Mates_ (CASSELL), might be regarded
as an awful warning to young gentlemen seeking bachelor-apartments.
Because, if the hero had been a little more careful about his
fellow-lodgers at No. 73 Keppel Street, he would not, in the first place,
have been defrauded of a large sum of money, or, in the second, have been
involved in a peculiarly revolting murder. (The special hatefulness of this
murder strikes me as rather superfluous. But this by the way.) On the other
hand, of course, he would never have married the heroine, and we should
have missed a very agreeable study of expanding adolescence. This, I take
it, is the real motive of Mr. BERESFORD'S story, as exemplified by his
pleasant introductory metaphor of the chicken and the egg. From the
feminine point of view, indeed, the tale might be not inaptly labelled
"Treatise on Cub-hunting." Anyhow, what with strange actresses and I.D.B.
criminals and painted ladies and reviewers (they _were_ a queer lot at No.
73!) the hero completes his tenancy with enough experience of life, chiefly
on its shadowy side, to last him for some time. An original and rather
appealing story, told with a good deal of charm.

* * * * *

I was waiting for it, and now, behold, it has come. In _The Shining
Heights_ (MILLS AND BOON) the War is over and we have to do wit