uman and animal
nature; it is one of those strong, thrilling, brilliant things which are
better worth reading the second time than the first. Entertaining
stories we have in plenty; but this is something more--it is a piece of
literature. At the same time it is an unforgettable picture of the whole
wild, thrilling, desperate, vigorous, primeval life of the Klondike
regions in the years after the gold fever set in. It ranks beside the
best things of its kind in English literature.

The tale itself has for its hero a superb dog named Buck, a cross
between a St. Bernard and a Scotch shepherd. Buck is stolen from his
home in Southern California, where Judge Miller and his family have
petted him, taken to the Klondike, and put to work drawing sledges.
First he has to be broken in, to learn "the law of club and fang." His
splendid blood comes out through the suffering and abuse, the starvation
and the unremitting toil, the hardship and the fighting and the bitter
cold. He wins his way to the mastership of his team. He becomes the best
sledge dog in Alaska. And all the while there is coming out in him "the
dominant primordial beast."

But meantime, all through the story, the interest is almost as much in
the human beings who own Buck, or who drive him, or who come in contact
with him or his masters in some way or other, as in the dog himself. He
is merely the central figure in an extraordinarily graphic and
impressive picture of life.

In none of his previous stories has Mr. LONDON achieved so strong a grip
on his theme. In none of them has he allowed his theme so strongly to
grip him. He has increased greatly in his power to tell a story. The
first strong note in the book is the coming out of the dog's good blood
through infinite hardship; the last how he finally obeyed "the call of
the wild" after his last and best friend, Thornton, was killed by the
Indians.

It has been very greatly praised during its serial run, Mr. MABIE
writing in _The Outlook_ of "its power and its unusual theme.... This
remarkable story, full of incident and of striking descriptions of life
and landscape in the far north, contains a deep truth which is embedded
in the narrative and is all the more effective because it is never
obtruded."

* * * * *

People of the Whirlpool

From the Experience Book of a Commuter's Wife

_By the Author of
"The Garden of a Commuter's Wife"_

With Eight Full-page Illustrations