the Oakland water-front are fine youngsters drinking themselves permanently silly because it is their only way of being men among men, jolly good fellows among jolly good fellows. A sound enough text for any sermon; and, I may honestly add, a sound enough sermon for any text, with a strong smell of the sea and of adventure about it. But I ask myself for what purpose the photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack London is inserted as a frontispiece? As well, I think, have had a portrait of Mr. Mills, with Mr. Boon inset.
Isn't The Youngest World (Bell) an engaging title for a book? It caught my interest at once. I am not altogether sure that the story itself is as good as its name, but that still leaves a margin of quality, and I for one have enjoyed it greatly in patches. Let Mr. Robert Dunn not too hastily condemn me if I say that he has written a fatiguing tale. Partly I mean this as a high compliment. The descriptions of hardships borne and physical difficulties overcome by his hero are so vivid that they convey a sensation of actual bodily strain in a manner that only one other living writer can equal. There are chapters in the book that leave one aching all over. So long, in fact, as Mr. Dunn's characters are content to do things, to climb mountains, to ford rivers, to endure hunger and cold and weariness, I am in close bodily sympathy with them; it is when they begin to talk and to explain their mental states that my keenness is threatened by another and less pleasing fatigue. It is not that the scope of the story—a man's regeneration by love and hardship—isn't a good one: quite the contrary. It is that I simply do not believe that human beings, especially those that figure in this book, would ever talk about themselves in this particular way. "In the name of our own blood," she uttered softtly, "of Love, the Future, and Victory..." That is a random sentence from the last page, and very typical of Mr. Dunn's dialogue. It is full of gracious qualities, thoughtful, and throughout on a high literary level, but as a realistic transcription of frontier talk it leaves me incredulous. Still the setting, I repeat, is quite wonderful. You shall read the chapters that tell of Gail's ascent of Mount Lincoln, and see if they don't stir your blood, especially where he reaches the top, alone (and therefore unable to talk), and sees the world at his feet. You will exult in this.
Mr. Victor Bridges has a very versatile pen and in most of the twenty-one pieces of Jetsam (Mills and Boon) which he has recovered from the waves of monthly magazines and elsewhere there is a certain amount of material for mirth. I do not however find him a startlingly original humorist, whether on the river Thames, where he seems to follow in the wake of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, or in a Chelsea "pub" where his manners are reminiscent of the characters of Messrs. W. W. Jacobs and Morton Howard. Again, in the story called "The First Marathon" (where, by the way, he states that "It is true that the word 'Marathon' was first used in connection with the old Olympian games," which seems a little unfair to Miltiades), the fun mainly depends on the use of such phrases as "Spoo-fer," "King Kod," and the "Can't-stik-you-shun-all Club." Other stories are of the adventurous or romantic type sacred to serial fiction, no fewer than three dealing with escaped convicts on Dartmoor, and one (the first in the book) describing the chance meeting of a man and a pretty girl on an uninhabited island off the West Coast of Scotland. Here, for some reason or other, the man insisted on calling his charming and unknown companion Astarte, a name which, if I had been in her place, I should have been inclined to resent. But Mr. Bridges' dialogue is nearly always bright, and his knowledge of the machinery of yarn-spinning excellent. There is just one other point however which I should like to mention. The book includes a brand-new Russian wolf-story, in which the heroes protect themselves from the bites of these ferocious quadrupeds by putting on armour, which they find in a deserted house. I don't object to that; but, when they leave the railway line along which they have been travelling and plunge into a forest-path they come to a place where the route forks and cannot make out which of the two roads will be more likely to lead them back to the railway. I do not feel that these men were the sort of people to be trusted to wander by themselves in a desolate Siberian anecdote.
The Caddie who saw the fairies.
Our New Masters.
The King can do no wrong. Of late
So ran the law; but, when to-day
Kinglike he seeks to serve the State,
Our super-monarchs frown and say:
The King can do no right—unless
By leave of half the Liberal Press.
The Light-weight Angler.
"Weighing 6lbs. 7oz., Mr. T. Snelgrove caught a golden carp whilst fishing in the mill pond at Addlestont, Surrey,"—People.
"He has slept... nearly 365 days on board the Admiralty yacht."
This, from a Daily Mail article in praise of Winston, is no doubt meant kindly.
"C. E. Cox begs to announce that he is now prepared to drill wells, for water, gas, oil, cash or old clothes."—Red Deer Advocate.
For cash is our choice.
