STORIES FOR BOYS.
THERE seems to be this year an excellent crop of boys' story- books, full of adventure, and generally containing some sort of instruction of a period or place which will be novel to them. How the writers " get up " the local colour, as it is called, is a mystery, for it is impossible that they should all have visited the places they describe, even if the stories deal with the present day : and yet it is exceedingly difficult to pick holes in the history or geography. They are all illustrated with stirring pictures, generally in colour, and the artists, too, must have given considerable study to their subjects in most cases. These remarks apply least of all, perhaps, to Mr. F. T. Bullen, because we know how he acquired knowledge of the sea. If we put his book, The Salvage of a Sailor (S. Partridge and Co. ; 3s. 6d.), among stories for boys, it is not because older readers will not enjoy the descriptions of the voyages and the perils of the sea, for they are most vivid and convincing. There is also some psychology here, since the story traces the development of a " waster,"a mere thoughtless animal, into a human being, and eventually a fine fellow. Nor would it be Mr. Bullen's work if there was no reference to religious influence: that is so palpably sincere that it does not seem out of place, but he would have done better to omit the brief passages of love-making, which have an artificial ring.—Mr. P. F. Westerman has two books which prove his versatility. One of them, Under King Henry's Banners (The Pilgrim Press, 3s. 6d.), takes us back to the reign of Henry V. The scene is laid partly in the South of England and partly in France, when the armies move to Harfleur and Agincourt. The conspiracy of Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey is unmasked. The hero, like his royal master, finds a bride in France. The second book, The Rival Submarines (S. Partridge and Co., 6s.), is as modern as its name implies. One vessel belongs to a piratical villain, the other to a scientific superman, some- what after the manner of Captain Nemo. After an amazing ocean cruise with a British naval officer who has been caught and taken on board, the enemy is demolished. The hero, besides his scientific talents, has a hatred of war, which he hopes to extinguish, but he does not regret the final ruse by which the naval officer manages that the masterpiece of submarine construction and its secrets should pass into the possession of the Admiralty.—Captain Gilson is equally up-to-date in both of his books. The Race Bound the World (Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 3s. 6d.) describes an aeroplane race for £100,000. The heroes who win the race in a fortnight (alas, for Jules Verne's eighty days!) are the aged inventor, who in real life must have died of the excite- ment and the " pace " in all senses of the first day ; his nephew, the real aviator ; and the fat, resourceful servant. However, we must not smile at them more than we are meant to, for their science is deadly serious. Of course, the foreign villains have stolen their secrets, and stoop to dastardly efforts to disable them, not once, but over the Alps, in India, at Shanghai, and in America. The foiling of their machinations in Shanghai would make a story in itself, and introduces a Chinese detective who out-Sherlocks Holmes. His other book, The Sword of Deliverance (James Nisbet and Co., Os.), is more credible, but an example of the hustle to be up-to-date. We had thought that next year would see stories of the Balkan War in plenty, but Captain Gilson is already first in the race. Moreover, some of the illustrations are from real photographs by a real newspaper correspondent, Mr. Seppings Wright. A young Englishman finds himself in the thick of the war round Adrianople and Lule Burgas. Though the Bulgarians evidently appeal most strongly to the author, he has put the Turks in no unfavourable light.— Another versatile writer is Mr. Strang. His Sultan Jim, Empire Builder (Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 6s.), is a young Englishman who looks for trouble and Phoenician mines in debatable territory on the borders of Portuguese East Africa. There be finds the remnant of a Mohammedan tribe and a wicked foreigner who tries to snatch the discovery of the mines, and the hero has plenty of fighting
to do. The Adventures Dick Trevanion (same publisher, 3s. 6d.) take place no further away than in Cornwall. But in Mr. Strang's hands, and in 1804, one can have great. adventures there amid smuggling and tin-mining.
In spite of the sadness that surrounds a conquered and diminished race whose savagery may soon be forgotten when only a fatalistic resignation or absorption is in evidence, the tomahawks and scalping knives of Red Indians ought not to disappear just yet from this class of fiction. They have given us too many thrills to be easily spared. They are to the fore in Mr. F. B. Forester's Beyond the Frontier (The Pilgrim Press, 3s. 6d.), which has plenty of excitement and one tense night when a lad's pluck is put to a very grim test.— The half-breeds of Saskatchewan are the villains of the piece in Mr. John Mackie's Canadian Jack (James Nisbet and Co., 3s. 6d.). The author is not only a good story-teller, but has also been a member of the N.W. Mounted Police, and (though it is himself that says it) that body of men has always been remarkable for courage, endurance, resource, and modesty. The book tells of an incident in Louis Riel's second rebellion in 1885. The rattle of bullets scarcely ceases for a moment when once we have warmed to the work. A good feature of the book is the value given to animals. There is a noble dog, a half-comic horse of the greatest use in the hands of an Irishman, and a tame bear.— Readers might wonder where in the world they might find themselves In the Grip of the Wild Wa. (A. and C. Black. 3s. 6d.). Mr. G. E. Milton takes a lad through various adventures to Burma. Thence he is taken in bad company up country to the Shan States and borders of China. There the Wild Wa gives him the pleasing choice between marrying a young queen till she should grow tired of him or of being dipped at once by an elephant in a boiling spring. How he escapes from the dilemma and returns laden with jewels to the young lady with whom he was shipwrecked on the voyage out should satisfy a glutton for excitement.—A capital book for younger boys is Ian Hardy, Naval Cadet, by Commander E. H. Currey (Seeley, Service, and Co., 5s.). It is full of high spirits and tells of an adventurous boy's happy life at home and at school, and eventually leaves him as a middy in the Navy before sails have been done away with. We can recom- mend it for any boy, unless his parents are determined that he shall not be stimulated to desire a naval career.—With all this good matter before us, it may yet be that there is nothing better than The Tiger of Mysore, At the Point of the Bayonet, and A Night of the White Cross, three old favourites by Henty (3s. 6d. each), which Messrs. Blackie republish with illustra- tions; or a fine edition of Ballantyne's The Coral Island (James Nisbet and Co., 10s. 6d. net), to which Sir J. M. Barrie has written an appreciative preface.
Of books which have something more serious mingled with excitement, The Battle by the Lake, by Dora Bee (R.T.S., 2s.), has some well-told adventure of the sixteenth century. It introduces Zwingli at Zurich, and the Papist hero becomes a very proper Protestant before the end. But Charles V. is represented in a not wholly unfavourable manner.—More attractive is The Palace Footboy, by Gertrude Hollis (S.P.C.K, 2s.). Here we have Somersetshire, the battle of Sedgemoor and the Trial of the Seven Bishops sympathetically and vividly described. The slightly didactic tone does not seem to jar, as the story is told to young boys by a grandfather: he had been the devoted servant of Bishop Ken at Wells.
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