gland who only KIPLING know? Well, they know one side of
it, and a fine side. The first sheaf of letters--"From Tideway to Tideway
(1892)"--describes a tour through America and Canada, with a rather too
obvious bias against the habits and institutions of the former, but with so
eloquent a presentation of the dream and fact of imperial pioneering
service that it might draw even from a Little Englander, "Almost thou
persuadest me!" "Letters to the Family" deals with the Canada of 1907, a
very different entity from the Canada of to-day after the later Imperial
Conferences and five years' trial of war, but none the less interesting to
hear about. A voyage in 1913, undertaken "for no other reason but to
discover the sun," is the begetter of the third group, "Egypt and the
Egyptians," the first letter of which will not, I imagine, be reprinted and
framed by the P. and O. Brilliant word-pictures of things seen, thumbnail
sketches of odd characters, clever records of remembered speech,
intelligent comment from a well-defined point of view--these you will have
expected, and will get.

* * * * *

Lady DOROTHY MILLS, who has already made some success as a holder of the
mirror up to a certain section of ultra-smart society, continues this
benevolent work in her new novel, _The Laughter of Fools_ (DUCKWORTH). It
is a clever tale, almost horridly well told, about the war-time behaviour
of the rottenest idle-rich element, in the disorganised and hectic London
of 1917-18. Perhaps the observation is superficial; but, just so far as it
pretends to go, Lady DOROTHY'S method does undoubtedly get home. Her
heroine, _Louise_, is a detestable little egoist, whose vanity and entire
lack of _moral_ render her an easy victim to the vampire crowd into which
she drifts. The "sensation" scenes, night club orgies, dope parties and the
like will probably bring the book a boom of curiosity; but there are not
wanting signs, in the author's easy unforced method, that with a larger
theme she may one day write a considerably bigger book. _The Laughter of
Fools_, one may say, ends tragically; _Louise_, after exhausting all her
other activities, being left about to join a nursing expedition to Northern
Russia. Which, judging by previous revelations of her general incompetence,
is where the tragedy comes in--for the prospective patients. A moral rather
carefully unmoralised is how I should sum up an unpleasant but shrewdly
writ