The Soul of a Teacher. By Roger Wray. (Chapman and
6s.)—There is much in Mr. Wray's story which is quite conventional : we find youthful love episodes such as his recorded in almost every autobiographical novel ; but all those chapters— and they form the greater part of the book—which are concerned with the art of teaching, with the career of Alan Clay from his own elementary school to his final failure, seem to be the outcome of personal experience, of an experience sometimes bitter, sometimes happy, always that of a man who, conscious himself of the real values of life, has been constantly hindered by the short-sightedness of his fellow-workers. Of course, it is always easy to be satirical at the expense of old-fashioned schools, to ridicule the practice of " c-a-t, cat " ; but Mr. Wray has certainly contrived to make his sarcasm biting and humorous : " Any boy who forgot his geography had to write it out after school One boy had to write fifty times, Leicester on the Soar.' (As if people in Leicester ever noticed the Soar ! As if it had any beauty or utility in Leicester ! As if a builder's plank wouldn't reach across it ! The thing was to know it.) " The writer has, moreover, learned the trick of clever sketching, and makes ready use of it : " Alan always recalled Waghorn in a characteristic setting : he was sitting up in his bed, patching his trousers by candlelight, and discussing the doctrine of the Trinity."
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