31 JANUARY 1925, Page 28

Callan2. By Beatrice Harraden. (Hodder and Stoughton. Os. net.)—Whether or

not it is the effect of a revulsion from autumn and the falling leaf, the novelists of the present season seem obsessed with the question of youth. Here we have Miss Harraden telling us a pleasing story in which the principal character, at the age of eighty, changes the whole of her life and habits because she hears a girl singing a song of youth in the garden. Though sentiment rules triumphant through the story, yet the reader will find the account of Moat House and its inhabitants very charming.