CURRENT LITE RAT LIRE.
In Camp and Cantonment. By Edith E. Cuthell. (Hurst and Blackett.)—This is a pleasant holiday volume composed of slight and superficial, but on the whole readable, "stories of foreign service." Perhaps Mr. Rudyard Kipling's strong military meat has spoiled one's appetite for the ordinary stories of Simla flirtations and mild passion which are—or are supposed to be— told over cigars and "pegs," and certainly there is no Kiplingesque strength in Miss Cuthell's sketches. There is. indeed, a touch of tragedy in the first, which bears the gruesome title of "The Camp of the Shadow of Death." The hero dies of cholera and of a heart broken by the slightness of Posie Prynne's affection, and the scheming of Mrs. Prendergast-Prynne. The great majority of the stories do not err, however, on the side of melancholy. Several like "The General's Glass Eye," "The Sincerest Flattery," and "My First Duel," are pervaded by a mild and essentially Irish humour. Altogether this is a good book for a wet afternoon.
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