eresting publication, opening with some extremely clever cartoons by
the United's soldier-member, George William Stokes. "Merry Minutes," a
poem in trochaic measure by Olive G. Owen, is distinguished by the touch
of beauty characteristic of all its author's work; but has a singular
sort of rhyming in the first and third lines of the stanzas. The cadence
seems to call for double rhymes, yet only the final syllables agree. The
last word of the first stanza is unfortunately shorn by the printer of
its final =s=. "The Dancing Tiger" is an excellent short story by
Raymond Blathwayt, which might, however, be improved in style by a
slightly closer attention to punctuation and structure of sentences.
"Home," by Margaret Mahon, is a poem in that rather popular modern
measure which seems to waver betwixt the iambus and anapaest. The
imagery is pleasing, and the sentiment, though not novel, is acceptable.
"The Choice," a serial story by Beryl Mappin, exhibits the same
immaturities of style which mark the didactic articles of this author;
yet so active is the imagination shown in some of the passages, that we
believe Miss Mappin requires only time and harder study in order to
become a very meritorious writer. The syntactical structure of this
story is, on the average, smoother than that of Miss Mappin's essays;
indeed, there is reason to believe that fiction is the better suited to
her pen. "Absence," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is a brief poem of
faultless harmony whose quaintly sparkling imagery gives to an old theme
a new lustre. "Education in Trinidad" is another of F. E. Hercules'
terse and informing descriptive sketches. "Alley," by Mrs. Jordan, is a
light pulsing lyric of almost Elizabethan quality, one of whose rhymes
is of a type which has caused much discussion in the United's critical
circles. The native pronunciation of New England makes of =scarf= and
=laugh= an absolutely perfect rhyme; this perfection depending upon the
curtailed phonetic value of the letter =r=; which in a place such as
this is silent, save as it modifies the quality of the preceding vowel.
In the London of Walker's day the same condition existed. But the tongue
and ear of the American West have become accustomed to a certain roll
which causes =scarf= to be enunciated as =scarrf=, thus throwing it out
of rhyme with words of similar sound which lack the =r=. The Westerner
would have to write =scahf=, in order to express to his own mind the
New-England