The Starry. Pool, and other Tales. By Stephen G. Tallents.
(Liverpool : The University Press. London : Constable and ('o. 3s.)—These sketches are concerned with the intimate private life of a discharged officer with his wife and babies. There is a great deal of delightful reading in them, and the first person singular, who tells the stories, is possessed of a charming fancy and of much literary ability. The questions which are troubling us all as to the impenetrable future are put with considerable subtlety. We are all thinking that
"there are a million men and a million fightiag that the little Cuinchy may be free to play in that garden among those daisies. But they are fighting for a cause of which that is only a symbol, a greater end than they can ever know qr we can ever wholly measure or achieve. And on the night when tsar is finished we shall stand on the very edge of the world, like children peering into the darkness, and no living soul can tell us what lights will answer us back."
Perhaps, however, the purely domestic studies are the most charming, such as those telling how Monsieur, Madame, and Pebe (number one) go and live in a new house, and the high festival they hold there, and the lioliday two of them have by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. All this is described by the author with a light and delicate touch.
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