14 NOVEMBER 1885, Page 25

"Follow My Leader;" or, the Boys of Templeton. By Talbot

Baines Reed. (Cassell and Co.) —This is a "school story," and a fairly successful one. If it does not come up to our ideal, it is at least a creditable effort after it. One difficulty, and that not by any means the least, which besets the writer who would tell snob a story is the difficulty of making boys talk naturally. Sometimes their conversa- tion is too fine, sometimes it is too slangy. The fact is, that nobody, it may almost be said, knows how boys talk among themselves ; and it requires that peculiar genius, which only the very best novelists have, of producing a natural and life-like article without a model to copy from. We hardly find this genius in The Boys qr Templeton, bat we have an excellent and wholesome story.