FICTION.

SALT OF LIFE*

Is, Mrs. Vaizey is not to he credited with the peculiar qualities which entitle their possessors to rank in the vau of living novel-writers, she has at any rate proved her right

to a very good second class in the school of fiction. She has an alert style and a decided eye for character, she holds the balance fairly between the rising and the passing generation, and she has an ample fund of material to draw upon for the illustration and decoration of her narrative. Salt of Life is not a story which depends on plot or the closely knit sequence of incident. It is rather a family history—in which the early life of the parents, up to their migration from Scotland to London, is rapidly sketched, and nine-tenths of the book is

devoted to the growth and adventures of their children from childhood to marriage. The father and mother belong to their generation, and the children to theirs, but there is no abrupt or tragic) cleavage ; indeed, the young people are largely left to go their own way, and their mishaps and sufferings are more the result of their untrammelled efforts at self-expres- sion than of any rebellion against a patriarchal tyranny. Of the three children, Aline is the most popular and attractive, but she pays the penalty attaching to those whom the gods love. Gregor is rather a rough diamond, and Jean is the ugly duckling who develops into something like a swan. The rail of heroine, however, is shared between her and her friend Octavio. Ryan, and it is with their friendship

and their love affairs that the story is chiefly concerned. Jean is clever, and has literary aspirations, but her intellectual abilities do not preserve her from preferring a selfish Adonis to a genuine man. Very fortunately for her, however, Raynor Legh jilts her for a lady of fortune, and in the end Jean is cured of her infatuation. Foolish in her own love affairs, she is wise in her handling of those of her friend, and when Octavia shows a lamentable vacillation in making up her mind, Jean proves a staunch champion of the young cavalry

officer, whose tempestuous methods of courtship are described in some of the most amusing pages of the story. Yet when Octavia marries Captain Muir and Jean goes to stay with them, their honeymooning ways fill her with positive resent- ment. As a matter of fact, her own wound was too raw to enable her to contemplate the conjugal felicity even of her dearest friends with equanimity. However, as we have already hinted, happiness falls to Jean's lot in the long run, and she wins a prize in the matrimonial lottery as well as in a novel competition, for Mrs. Vaizey has old-fashioned views about

happy endings.

The main characters are well drawn, but we owe Mrs. Vaizey a grudge for allowing Jean's tutor, Mr. Swift, to pass so rapidly out of the story, and we may justify the expression of our regret by the following description of the manners and methods of a man who was "a brilliant scholar, a delightful

personality, a hopeless social failure" :—

" Edward Swift had few faults, but a thousand eccentricities. In the big tests of life he bore himself like a hero and a gentle- man ; in the common ways of every day he behaved like a clown.

* Salt of Ljfe. By Elm George do Horne Vaizey. London Mills and Boon, Da.

To behold him walk down a street was to imagine an escape from Bedlam. He talked aloud to himself, as he went, his face screwed into emphatic illustration of his words, his long arms tossed like flails ; when he crossed a road and faced the pavement at the further end, he braced himself together, and leapt up the inch incline with the ferocity of a combatant in a Marathon sport. His coat flew wide to the breeze, and was invariably too high in the neck, and too short in the sleeves. His voice was harsh and high, and in moments of intensity mounted to a veritable squeal. Small wonder that Edward Swift had proved a failure as a clergy. man ! The finest sermon that was ever written would have failed of its point, when handicapped by his delivery, therefore Swift turned his attention to tuition, and his pupils profited, where the Church lost. He was a prince of teachers—lucid, illuminating, humorous, stimulating. He taught Aline and Jean, Latin and Greek, mathematics and political economy. In odd moments they studied zoology as an extra subject for the Cambridge local examination; they ploughed through Home Paulinae, and 'took up' the literature of special periods, the charm and originality of Swift's methods arousing interest in the dullest task, It was a delightful spectacle to behold this man of letters listening with smiling deference to Jean's arguments against the tenets of political economists. They argued for many hours over the con- tradictory statement that a demand for commodities is not a demand for labour, and the more positive grew Jean, the more violent her disclaimers, the more delightedly did Swift wriggle and splutter, and tug at his straggly beard, and kick with his flattened feet. No automatic pupils for him! Make them think ! Make them think ! Jean's contradictoriness roused approval, rather than blame. 'Jean,' he told her parents, has an original mind.' Mr. Swift discovered Jean's fondness for story writing and

fostered it by every means in his power. His subjects for composition were a delightful change from those favoured by his predecessor. Miss Penton patronized such themes as

' Honour," Patriotism," Spring-time," How I spent my summer holiday.' Mr. Swift's demands on the imagination included such

tests as, A letter from a Puritan maid to a young kinsman, after

the battle of Marsden Moor,' A one-act duologue between Mr. Gladstone and Bismarck,' 'An account (in verse) of the wreck of the White Ship, and the death of the young prince, as given by the only survivor, a butcher of Epsom, to his own grandson. . . . History and literature were pure joy ; political economy was interesting, if at times quite mad, even Euclid' could be mastered with a struggle, but Latin was to both girls an unondiug struggle and despair. The gift of languages was not theirs, and it was only Swift's conviction of the lifelong advantages of the study which gave him patience to drive them onward. He even coached Jean for the senior Cambridge examination, Aline was spared all such exertions, groaning, and appealing to his gods for patience at every step of the way, and on the eve of the struggle informed her resignedly that not another examinee in the kingdom could vie with the vastness of her ignorance on this subject. But I said you should take it,' he screamed, 'and take it you shall ! There's something to be learned even from failing.' . . . He had the sur-

prise of his life when the reports came out six weeks later, and

Jean was shown to have passed in Latin. 'That finishes me !'

cried the honest coach. shall never believe in examinations after This ! ' Jean also passed in French, zoology, religious know- ledge and with distinction in English. She had written a long and eloquent essay to prove that youth knew more than age, and

that a tribute of respect was due from a waning generation to the vigorous young souls to whom had been vouchsafed a fuller light. It was exceedingly well expressed, and gave a tired examiner a hearty laugh, a relief for which he would willingly have donated two stars, if necessary."