Mothers in. Israel. By J. S. Fletcher. (john Murray. fis.)—
This is a story of the " petty .spites of the village spire," and two farmers' vrives play the parts of the "mothers in• Israel." These ladies are singularly unscrupulous in inventing and making public a scandal about the village schoolmistress, Mr-Fletcher prefaces his novel by saying that the phase of village 'life which he illus- trates "may seem incredible to town dwellers." Now, though slander and backbiting are sometimes a very deplorable feature of village life, is it possible to say that towns are free from these drawbacks? The only difference seems to be that whereas the village community being smaller, a scandal of this kind spreads through the whole of it, a town scandal is confined to the partioular set of people interested in the victim. As, however, this set of people is the only one about whose opinion the victim cares very greatly, the net result must be much the same. Apart from the special purpose of the book, Mothers in Israel is a. well-constructed picture of life in a Yorkshire village, and the portraits of the two principal characters and of the clergyman's housekeeper, Elisabeth, are drawn in a very clear and lifelike manner.
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