The Ways of Y este:day, by A. M. W. Stirling
(Thornton Butterworth, 18s.), were a West Country family of clergy, soldiers and merchants. " From the reign of Charles their history may be traced in undoubted and unbroken sequence "—it is an interesting history and a very happy one. They had a great deal of luck. Again and again fortune favoured them. They made good marriages, formed for themselves links with the governing class, and were a constant illustration of the saying that money comes where money is. A large portion of the book is concerned with the doings of Lewis Way, who was born in 1772 and to whom Mr. John Way, of Achill, who was no relation at all and who began life as a servant, left a very large fortune. Three hundred thousand pounds is a large suns now, and it was a huge fortune then. Lewis was overjoyed. His first act was to " stick his barrister's wig on the pole of the fire screen and shake his fist at it." Then he went to fetch his very young wife, who was staying away, in a grand carriage with a swing cot for the baby, then he wrote to an intimate friend to tell the delightful news, " I am released from the bondage of an irksome profession and launched into the world in the prime of life with the full possesSion and free enjoyment of all that can make it desirable." How he became a clergyman, how he bought a most beautiful house dating from 1480, and how he travelled to Russia in a carriage of his own design much like a caravan and interviewed the Czar on behalf of the, persecuted Jews, is all fascinatingly described, often in his own letters. A perfect book this to enhance the pleasure of a lazy holiday or while away- a
convalescence. * * * *
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