gave us detached articles all relating to the one great subject. The
present book is a continuous story, the episodes of which are held together
by the deeds and characters of a quartette of friends, _Larry Arundel_,
_Billy Simson_, _Pug Sneath_, and the noble and adventurous American,
_Kentucky Lee_, who had enlisted in our Army to prove that "too proud to
fight" was a phrase which did not agree with the traditions of an old
Kentucky family. These four and the rest of the regiment, the Stonewalls,
are plunged into one of the big "pushes" of the British Army, and their
achievements in one form or another are thick on every page of the book.
The author has reduced the description of a modern battle to a fine art. No
one can describe more vividly the noise, the squalor, the terror, the high
courage, the self-sacrifice and again the nerve-shattering noise, that go
to make up the fierce confusion of trench-fighting. How anyone succeeds in
surviving when so many instruments are used for his destruction is a
mystery. The book is very certainly one to be read and re-read.

* * * * *

_Separation_ (CASSELL) is another of those intimate studies of Anglo-Indian
life that ALICE PERRIN has made specially her own. The tragedy of it is
sufficiently conveyed by the title. Separation, of husband from wife or
parent from child, is of course the spectre that haunts the Anglo-Indian
home. It was, chiefly at least, for the health of their child _Winnie_ that
_Guy Bassett_ was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in
Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a
grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This
first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful
young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar.
Unfortunately poor _Bassett_ escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to
plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not
spoil for you an ingenious plot. For one thing at least the book is worth
reading, and that is the picture, admirably drawn, of the half-caste
_Orchard_ family, whose ways and speech and general outlook you will find
an abiding joy. Mrs. PERRIN has nothing better in her whole gallery, which
is saying much.

* * * * *

You probably know Mr. BLACKWOOD'S elusive method of mystery-mongering by
now. None of his characters can ever _quite_ make