Pomegranate: the Story of a Chinese Schoolgirl. By Jennie Beckingsale,
B.A. (Morgan and Scott. 2s. 6d. net.)—This is a picture of Chinese life, minute and faithful as a photograph,—a photograph, too, from which the lines of Nature have not been smoothed away. Pomegranate is not by any means a model ; she is sullen, revengeful, and often disposed to be idle ; but Miss Beckingsale makes us interested in her and in her belongings, especially the fine old man her grandfather. So we follow her career with interest, reading about her failures and her successes at school, all described with a convincing fidelity, and about the great struggle of her early days,—the unbinding of her feet. She had hated the idea--it would make her as one of the slave-girls- but other influences prevail, not the least powerful among them being the sight of her natural-footed schoolfellows running about with all agility with which she could not compete. It is almost a disappointment when, coming to the end, we find that she is to be married in, the usual Chinese fashion, by an arrangement to which she has absolutely nothing to say. But it had to be, if the story was to be true to life.
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