STORIES FOR BOYS.
SIR ARTHUR Gramma-Cm:ma's new volume of stories of the Spanish Main, Mortallorre and Aunt Trinidad (Bristol : Arrowsmith,
is a capital gift-book for boys. The first story concerns a treasure. huntwhich succeeds by sheer luck. The second, a more ambitious effort, sets the old buccaneer stories of Esquemeling in a new frame- work. The narrator's outwardly respectable widowed aunt has a fortnightly carouse with two of her old cronies, who recall their hot youth in the West Indies and tell the lad about Sharp, Brea-de-For, John Avery, and other buccaneers with whom they sailed. It is an ingenious idea, very neatly worked out.—Mr. Richard Bird's The Ripswayd Ring (Humphrey Milford, 3s. 6d. net) is an excellent school story. The main theme is the organization of the day boys at a large Public School in a distinct "House "—a sound plan which has been adopted in many cases with good results—and the prefect's troubles with an idle and corrupt minority are very well described. Mr. Bird has shown in former stories his power of presenting the ordinary human schoolboy as he is, but this clever and amusing book is the best that he has yet written.—Mr. Herbert Strang'a With Haig on the Somme (same publisher and price) ie an attractive and exciting story of trench-fighting and spy-hunting. The secret of Mr. Strang's success is, we think, that he describes one or two episodes in great detail and does not try to cover too large a canvas. ----At All Risks, by Mr. John Finbarr (same publisher and price), contains the adventures of an English boy of fifteen, living in France, who is caught by the advancing Germans and makes his escape with great difficulty. He is saved in the end by the " god out of the machine," or, in other words, by a British aeroplane ; but this seems rather like a confession of weakness on the author's part.—Mr. John S. Margerison spins amusing yarns about the Navy in war time in two readable volumes, one called Action (Hodder and Stoughton, 5s. net) and the other Periscope and Propeller (C. Arthur Pearson, Is. 3d. net).
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