might seem to connote. I wrote to him thus:

Dear Mr. Petherton,-Miss GoreLangley has written to me to say that she is getting up a Rag Auction on behalf of the Belgian Relief Fund, and not knowing you personally, and having probably heard that I am connected by ties of kinship with you, she asked me to approach you on the subject of any old clothes you may have to spare in such a cause.

Of course I'm not suggesting you should allow yourself to be denuded in the cause (like Lady Godiva), but I daresay you have some odds and ends stowed away that you would contribute; for instance, that delightful old topper that you were wont to go to church in before the War, and that used to cause a titter among the choir -can't you get the moths to let you have it? Neckties, again. Where are the tartans of '71? Surely there may be some bonny stragglers left in your tiebins. And who fears to talk of '98 and its fancy waistcoats? All rancor about them has passed away, and if you have any ring-straked or spotted survivors, no doubt they would fetch something in a good cause. I hope you will see what you can do for

Yours very truly,

Henry J. Fordyce.

Petherton's reply was brief. He

wrote:

Sir,-Had Miss Gore-Langley chosen a better channel for the conveyance of her wishes I should have been only too pleased to do what I could to help. As it is, I do not care to have anything to do with the affair.

Yours faithfully,

Frederick Petherton.

But he was better than his word, as I soon discovered. So I wrote:

Dear Petherton,-I have had such a treat today. I took one or two things across to Miss Gore-Langley, who was unpacking your noble contributions when I arrived. Talk about

family historics; your parcel spoke volumes.

I was frightfully interested in that brown bowler with the flat brim, and those jam-pot collars. Parting with them must have been such sweet sorrow. I feel like bidding for some of your things, among which I also noted an elegantly-worked pair of braces. With a little grafting on to the remains of those I am now wearing, the result should be something really serviceable. I don't mind confessing to you that I simply can't bring my mind to buying any new wearing apparel just now. I'd like the bowler too. It should help to keep the birds from my vegetables, and incidentally the wolf from the door. And seeing it fluttering in the breeze you would have a continual reminder of your own salad days.

Surely the priceless family portrait in the Oxford oak frame got into the parcel by mistake. I am expecting to acquire that for a song, as it cannot be of interest except to one of the family, and I should be glad to number it among my heirlooms.

Miss G.-L. is awfully braced with the haul, and asked me to thank you, which is one of my objects in writing this.

Yours sincerely,

Harry Fordyce.

Petherton was breathing hard by this time, and let drive with:

Sir, It is like your confounded impertinence to overhaul the few things I sent to Miss Gore-Langley, and had I known that you would have had the opportunity of seeing what my wife insisted on sending I should certainly not have permitted their dispatch.

I have already told you what I think of your ridiculous claims to kinship with my family, and shall undoubtedly try to thwart any impudent attempts you may make to acquire my discarded belongings. The photograph you mention was of course accidentally included in the parcel, and I am sending for it.

Yours faithfully.

Frederick Petherton.

whose official designation, as a saving of time, is usually shortened to "the Waacs."

In our part of the world the Waacs have ceased to be a novelty. They preceded me in the district, and I do not know how long they have been here but it is long enough to have started a camp cabbage garden, after the fashion of masculine corps. Their neat khaki uniforms pervade the cobbled streets and, office hours over, are dotted on the country roads; and, judging by the frequency with which you meet them under escort, they would seem to be popular with the Army from a social point of view. That temporary creation dubbed "Somewhere in France" has acquired the habit of assimilating new developments, and one gathers that even the Waacs' first appearance aroused but a passing sensation. Nevertheless, they are in their way a curiosity; these brown-hatted, khaki-clad young women are something new in the history of soldiers and soldiering. Women in numbers have attached themselves to armies before now; but these organized feminine battalions for noncombatant duties are a direct product of the new warfare which is fought not only by the soldier and won not only in the field. Incidentally one speculates as to what Army life will make of the ordinary girl, how affect her in habits and outlook. For the life she is leading is Army life, rubbing elbows with soldiers, domiciled in barracks, hedged round by the barriers of discipline. It leaves its mark on the man who has lived it and will leave its mark on her.

As regards appearance there is not much fault to be found with her; her neatness is ultra-military. All the same, I am told that, in spite of her smartness, the Waac-some of her-not infrequently suffers from homesickness when she first settles down over

Channel, which, given her newness to barrack conditions, is a misfortune not to be wondered at. Girls fresh from home and the comparative privacy it affords must almost inevitably take time to adapt themselves to a life lived entirely in common; close quarters, even if comfortable, are not suited to every temperament, and seven in a bed-room may at first be a trial to one used to slumber alone. But one gathers from the look of the majority that the shaking-down process is not of very long duration, that with more or less swiftness they find their level and adapt themselves to camp life and atmosphere. They enrol, one imagines, in the sensible spirit, well knowing that the small discomforts which will fall to their lot are as nothing to the hardships and dangers their brothers are called on to suffer, since they live-in the camp I speak of, at least-under model conditions as regards sanitation and health.

Their work would appear to have been a success-at any rate their numbers are increasing, and with the increase has come the inevitable need to provide them with interest for their leisure. That means more accommodation than the regulation mess and living huts-in other words, the same facilities for rest, amusement, and supplementing of rations that the Y. M. C. A. provides for their comrades of the Army. What they need they have: a hut, own brother to the countless others that are served by the Red Triangle; well scattered with chairs, well furnished with tables, a provision counter at one end and a miniature stage at the other. In short the familiar compound of tea-room. club-room, and concert-hall-where you sip your cocoa, write your letters, and give or attend entertainments. "Y. W. C. A." is the sign on its face; the two organizations work together for the welfare of the girls.

When I made my visit the evening was typical August; there were deck chairs planted in the open, a game of tennis was in progress, and half the camp had wandered out a-walking. Even so, the hut was by no means neglected; there was custom at the counter and a tidy audience for a lecture. And tonight, when the rain is beating down in torrents, I know, without telling, that it will be filled from end to end-as it will fill every evening when the darkness lengthens and outside amusements are impossible. It has been said so often what these hut-rooms means that one is halfashamed of repeating it, but there may be some, even nowadays, who cannot stretch imagination sufficiently to picture the blank that their disappearance would leave. Without such a meeting place and the interests it creates, a temporary colony, with no roots in the soil, would often find its hours of leisure more wearisome than its hours of work. A hut concert The London Post.

And be it remembered that in such a temporary colony immediate surroundings are permanent and hard to get away from. There are very few facilities in Northern France for travel, for change and week-ending; you must give your reason, would you enter a train-and the reason has got to be a good one. Hence your change of idea and relaxation of mind must be found on the spot you are tied to— tied to, maybe, "for the duration." The camp and your daily duties for the time being are your world, and the hut where you are made welcome and forget your work is often the element which makes that narrow world something better than a well-managed

pen.

The motto "First Aid to the Well," which decorates the "jacket" of Dr. Henry Dwight Chapin's volume "Health First: The Fine Art of Living" (The Century Co.) defines briefly the main purpose of this very sane and helpful book. Dr. Chapin does not at all agree with the theory mistakenly defined as "Oslerism" that the best productive years of life are passed at the age of forty, and that at sixty the active working years are over. holds that if a person lives to be sixty and is then in a fair condition of health there is no good reason why such a life should not be usefully prolonged until eighty or ninety; and he gives a number of conspicuous instances in which this has been the case. His dominant

He

aim is not to heal the sick so much as to help the well to remain well. His suggestions are directed to promoting health for the infant, for the child, for the middle-aged and for the old; they are specific, sensible and practical, and, if they were to be generally followed, they would not only diminish the rate of mortality but would add greatly to the joy of living.

The sub-title of Edgar Dewitt Jones's "Fairhope"-the "Annals of a Country Church"-describes its contents accurately; but gives no adequate idea of its truthfulness and piquancy. The town, and the church which is the center of its life, are placed in northern Kentucky, but might as well

have been in rural New York or New England, so true are they to the type which is fast passing away in all sections of the country. Whether there is any element of fiction in any of these fourteen sketches it would be difficult to say; but it is not easy to believe that they are anything other than transcripts from real life, written by one whose early years were spent in this quiet community, and to whom the Boardmans, the Shelleys, the Brownings, the Johnsons, the Dodges, the Menifees, the Perrys and the rest were neighbors and kith and kin. The sketches of Richard Marvin, James Cowell, Harmon Vaughn, and other ministers, young and old who, at one time or another, led the little flock at Fairhope church, steered them through their theological discussions, carried on their "protracted meetings," exhorted them from the pulpit, presided at their sociables, baptized them, married them, and preached funeral sermons over them are all delightfully done. Not since Sarah Orne Jewett laid down her pen have we had sketches of this type that were as good as these. The Macmillan Co.

One of the strongest of recent novels, and standing close to "Mr. Britling" in its portrayal of the moods through which loyal Englishmen have been passing, is St. John Ervine's "Changing Winds," dedicated to the memory of Rupert Brooke. It follows from their schooldays till the war divides the group, the fortunes of four close friends-Gilbert Farlow, whose father was one of the first members of the Fabian Society and who proudly calls himself an hereditary Socialist; Roger Carey, a clergyman's son; Ninian Graham, heir to a Devonshire property held by his family under

Henry the Second; and Henry Quinn, the son of an Irish landowner whose lovable inconsistencies and eccentricities help to shape the boy's character. The story fills nearly six hundred pages, and is divided into three books. The first passes quickly over the school period, after which the three English boys go, as a matter of course, to Cambridge, and lingers over Henry's boyish fancy for the handsome daughter of a tenant farmer, his initiation into Irish problems under the guidance of a tutor who is an ardent Gaelic scholar and a fanatical Nationalist, and his four years at Trinity College, Dublin. In the second book, the four friends rejoin one another in London, where Roger becomes a barrister, and Gilbert a dramatic critic; Ninian takes up engineering, and Henry achieves a success in fiction. Eager discussions of all sorts of current questions disclose the personalities of the four, and the modest part which they take in London society brings a happy love affair to one and a miserable infatuation to another. Book Three describes the response of the four young men to the appeal of the war. The story is brilliantly written, and the author's insight into human nature is remarkable both for its range and depth and for its delicacy of expression. The friendship between the young men will recall to readers of the last generation their delight in "Tom Brown at Oxford," and Mary Graham herself, with her sincerity and poise, has something in common with Tom's own Mary. The reputation which Mr. Ervine has already made, both in fiction and the drama, as an observer and interpreter of Irish life gives special interest to the chapters on Ireland. The Macmillan Co.