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fighting in Belgium and France, through the Battle of the Somme, and is as cheerful, as courageous and as true an example of good comradeship as ever. It is a gallant regiment in the field and in the trenches and it is fortunate in its historian, whose unfailing sympathy and humor make every chapter a delight. It is to be regretted that there is to be no third volume, chiefly because, as Major Beith explains, the First Hundred Thousand, as such, are no more; or, as Sergeant Mucklewame expressed it: "There's no that mony of us left now, onyways."

Who "Alpha of the Plough" may be -author of the fifty or more brief essays which make up the latest volume in the Wayfarers' Library called "Pebbles on the Shore" (E. P. Dutton & Co.) -is not disclosed beyond the fact that he is an English journalist, one of a group contributing to the London Star. But the essays are charming, touched with the pathos and tragedy of the great war, yet not directly related to it. As the Preface suggests, they are "pebbles gathered on the shore of a wild sea" but, although written in a stormy time, they show an understanding of Nature and of human nature which would make them pleasant reading at any time. They are varied in theme and sunny in spirit.

"Winning His Army Blue" by Norman Brainerd (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.) is a story of boy life in a military boarding-school, where the great goal of the boys' ambition is the winning of special honors which, if won, open the way ultimately to a commission in the United States Army. As the conditions are varied, turning not only upon scholarship and physical training, but upon character, the contest for these honors develops traits, good and bad, and is attended with

many stirring incidents. Eight illustrations by John Goss decorate the book. Rebecca Middleton Samson's "Schoolgirl Allies" from the same publishers, introduces a new author to readers who are certain to ask for more stories from the same source. It is a story of the school life of two American sisters, who are pupils in a finishing school at Brussels, where they are intimately timately associated with English, French and Belgian girls. It is full of incident from the first chapter to the last and the different traits of character, individual and national, are developed unobtrusively but effectively. The author has a light and pleasant touch, and her characters are true to life. There are six illustrations by Clara Olmstead. Edna A. Brown's "The Spanish Chest" -also from the press of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.-has an unusual setting in the island of Jersey, where an American lady with her daughter and sons are described as passing a winter as lodgers in a villa, and having many enjoyable experiences and making many friends. An element of mystery and adventure, indicated in the title, is the discovery of a Spanish chest and an ancient manuscript, dating back to the time of Charles II. The book is dedicated to the memory of the two girls for whom it was chiefly written and who shared a winter spent in the Channel Islands but "have now gone on a longer journey." The fourteen illustrations are in part the work of John Foss, and in part from photographs.

Horace Mather Lippincott, joint author of an earlier work on the Colonial homes of Philadelphia and its neighborhood, has followed the congenial researches which had their fruit in that book with the publication of a painstaking and profusely illustrated volume on "Early Phila

delphia, Its People, Life and Progress" (J. B. Lippincott Co.). Opening with a suitable tribute to the character and services of William Penn, who founded the city and did much to shape its earlier history, the author pursues steadily his aim of bringing together under one cover many fragmentary, and scattered accounts of important and peculiar customs and institutions which still survive in the Philadelphia of today. He describes the early settlers and their habits of life; emphasizes the worth and sobriety of the Quaker ideals; and, in successive chapters, writes of the churches and their people, the market place, the government, the days of stage coaches and post roads, the squares and parks, the theaters and the old taverns, and of such characteristically Philadelphia institutions as the Library Company, the American Philosophical Society, the University, the Law Academy, the College of Physicians, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Franklin Institute, the Athenæum, the City Troops, the Friends' Asylum for the Insane, the Philadelphia Dispensary, the Carpenters' Company, and many others. In spite of the many changes through which it has passed, and in spite of a deterioration in certain directions which has brought it, of late, into painful prominence, Philadelphia has succeeded better than most American cities in preserving the old landmarks and the old ideals. They are well presented in the present volume, the value of which is greatly enhanced by more than one hundred illustrations, many of which are copies of old prints.

It was inevitable that Mr. H. G. Wells should popularize in the form

of fiction the ideas which he so recently gave to the serious public in "God the Invisible King," and "The Soul of a Bishop" is the result. The bishop, of course, passes through the denials and repudiations with which that book opens, and ends in the beliefs with which it closes. Princhester, his cathedral city, is in the heart of the industrial district; the bishop's family includes his wife, Lady Ella, the daughter of an earl, and five children in whom, in spite of their carefully guarded girlhood, all sorts of modern ferments are at work. An unexpected feature and one that decidedly breaks the continuity of the character development is the introduction of a mysterious drug as the source from which the new light comes to the bishop, its tonic influence reviving his courage, and giving him an assurance of the invisible by a veritable appearance. Withdrawing from the church, the bishop is urged by Lady Sunderbunda rich American under whose sympathetic spell he has blamelessly fallento allow her to build for him the tabernacle, "a very plain, very simple, very beautifully proportioned building,” in which he is to give his "message." Here again, the text from the earlier volume is expanded into a commentary —an extremely clever commentary, with amusing glimpses of feminine nature, including Lady Ella's and the five daughters'. The conservative, if they take up this book at all, will find less to offend in it than in the other, but they may also find it less worth their while. An English reviewer describes it as "Mr. Wells almost at his best and almost at his worst-social satire of the most delicate, theology of the most barren." The Macmillan Co.

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XVI. Monal tree. By Neil Munro
XVII.
XVIII. "O What Saw You?" By Wilfred Wilson Gibson

Homewards. By Hugh A. MacCartan

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

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