ON HAZARDOUS SERVICE.
On Hazardous Service. By William Gilmore Beymer. (Harper and Brothers. 7s. 6d. net.)—Addressed primarily, if not exclu- sively, to American readers, Mr. Beymer's tales of true adventure presuppose a familiarity with the events and personalities of the Civil War which few but his countrymen are likely to bring to them. Mr. Beymer has compiled with considerable difficulty —so quickly have those keen vitalities sank into the limbo of research—a group of studies of the scouts and spies who gave their brilliant faculties to the cause of freedom or of retrogression s snob men as Bowie and Rowand, and, most striking of all, those heroines of superhuman coolness and resource, Miss Van Lew and Mrs. Greenhow. The story how, equipped in some cases with no better training than that of shop or counting-house, they staked their lives on their wits, picking their way chamois-like through a dizzy culmination of hairbreadth chances to safety or an unknown grave, makes an enthralling record which even the least expert cannot read without interest and inspiration.
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