Boston" and "Mountain Interval." The racy humor
of these narratives is thoroughly indigenous, and Mr. Bradley's work has
a vivid dramatic power which challenges successfully a comparison with
the stories of John Fox, Jr. These poems prove Mr. Bradley's rightful
claim to be the first adequate imaginative interpreter of the people who
live in the Cumberland Mountains.

THE FIGHTING MEN by _Alden Brooks_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Of these
six stories four have been published in Collier's Weekly during the past
two years, and elsewhere I have had occasion to comment upon their
excellence. These narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a war
epic, which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to
Stephen Crane's masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." Few writers,
other than these two, have been able to portray the naked ugliness of
warfare, and the passions which warfare engenders, with more brutal
power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of
permanence, but I am disposed to rank them with that other portrait of
the mercilessness of war, "Under Fire," by Henri Barbusse.

LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS by _Thomas Burke_ (Robert M. McBride & Co.). These
colorful stories of life in London's Chinatown are in my humble belief
destined never to grow old. This volume is the most important volume of
short stories by a new English writer to appear during 1917, and is only
surpassed by Daniel Corkery's volume "A Munster Twilight." Such
patterned prose in fiction has not been known since the days of Walter
Pater, and Mr. Burke's sense of the almost intolerable beauty of ugly
things has a persuasive fascination for the reader who may have a strong
prejudice against his subjects. Such horror as Mr. Burke has imagined is
almost impossible to portray convincingly, yet the author has softened
its starkness into patterns of gracious beauty and musical rhythmic
speech.

RINCONETE AND CORTADILLO by _Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra_, translated
from the Spanish by _Mariano J. Lorente_, with a preface by _R. B.
Cunninghame Graham_ (The Four Seas Co.). This is an excellent
translation by a Spanish man of letters of what is perhaps the best
exemplary Novel by Cervantes. As Mr. Cunninghame Graham points out in
his delightful introduction, "Rinconete and Cortadillo" is perhaps the
best sketch of Spanish low-life that has come down to us. It is highly
amoral, despite its sub-title, and all the more delightful perhaps on