19 NOVEMBER 1898, Page 25

"Courage, True Hearts ! " By Gordon Stables, M.D., R.N.

(Blackie and Son.) — Certainly these "true hearts" needed courage, for they encountered many moving adventures by field and flood. Dr. Gordon Stables's readers know that he does not stint them in the matter of incident, and that his heroes, once enlisted, see plenty of active service. Shipwreck, cannibals, gorillas—for fortune sends against them brute enemies as well as human—encounter them, and they take them all with a frolic welcome. And these brave fellows are not, we are glad to be told, mere creations of fancy. Dr. Stables has such a plentiful store of facts that, as he says, it would be "downright foolish to fall back upon fiction for some time yet." Anyhow, be they fact or fiction, his books make good reading.