uty which women's dress has lately
shown. And that surely, is by no means to have lived in vain!

* * * * *

There are few Memsahibs who know India and can write about it as well as
Mrs. ALICE PERRIN, so that when she calls her new book _The Happy
Hunting Ground_ (METHUEN) she sets you thinking. And when you begin to
think, you see that that really is the meaning of those tearful
farewells at Victoria and Charing Cross, that heavy-hearted cheering and
waving of handkerchiefs as the liner puts off from the docks, which are
for us who stay at home the symbol of our share in the burden of empire.
When our sisters and our daughters (and our cousins and aunts) sail away
to Marseilles and the East they go to find husbands, largely because for
many of them there is in this country little prospect of marriage with
men of their own class. But that is only half the story. They go in
search of mates. They stay to play, as helpmeets, the woman's part in
carrying on the high tradition of the British Raj. With this fundamental
truth as her background, Mrs. PERRIN has drawn, simply but with
practised skill, the picture of a young girl who leaves the dull
security of Earl's Court to go a-hunting in the plains and the hills,
obedient to the call of India, which is in her bones. There, like many
another before her, she loves and suffers, and makes sacrifices and
mistakes, and (I am glad to say) finds happiness at the last. The
strength of Mrs. PERRIN'S book, apart from the value of its background,
lies in the reality of its characters. If you have a drop of
Anglo-Indian blood in your veins you will know what it means. You will
greet them as blood relations, and take a kinsman's interest not only in
their joys and sorrows, but in their whole attitude towards life, and
even their little tricks of thought and speech.

* * * * *

About a year ago Mr. JOSEPH KNOWLES began to think that "the people of
the present day were sadly neglecting the details of the great book of
nature," and asked himself if he could not do something to remedy
matters. His answer to this question was to take off all his clothes,
and, on August 4, 1913, to enter the wilderness of Northern Maine, and
live like a primitive man for two months. On page 12 of _Alone in the
Wilderness_ (LONGMANS) he is to be seen taking off his coat (and posing,
I feel bound to add, very becomingly), and eight pages farther on