Dick. By G. F. Bradby. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 3s.
6d.)—In Dick, or, as Mr. Bradby calls it in his sub-title, "A Story without a Plot," we have a study of boy life worthy to rank with Mr. Eden Phillpotts's "Human Boy." The book is in the form of the diary of a. London business man, who with his wife is taking a rest at a quiet village on the Norfolk coast. Persuaded by his wife, he invites a small Rugby boy, or, as he is described by the enraged parents of another boy, "Rugby bear," whose father and mother are in Peru, to spend the summer holidays with them. Perhaps the most amusing thing in a very amusing book is the description of how Dick, the boy in question, is beguiled by his host and bostess into the perusal of his holiday task, Scott's "Old Mortality," which, as a matter of course, Dick has left behind at Rugby. Dick is persuaded to listen to the reading aloud of what he is told is "A Sporting Knock," by C. B. Fry, but which is in reality his host's copy of the romance disguised in brown paper. Dick becomes interested in the story, but also suspicions. "Will you take your dying oath,' he said to my wife, whom he knows to be incapable of imposture, that it is really by C. B. Fry?' I thought the time had come when the truth might be revealed, so I said: No, Dick, it is by a gentleman called Sir Walter Scott, and its real title is "Old Mortality."' 'Great Scott!' exclaimed the boy, with an expression of comic dismay. 'Not my holiday Tag ? " Yes,' I said, with a smile, 'it is the rotten book that you left behind in your study.' Fortu- nately Dick's interest survived the shock of discovery." Besides much high-spirited fun, Mr. Bradby, who, we feel sure, must be a schoolmaster, makes a very sound criticism on the system of destroying youthful imaginations with verbs in le, and "twenty or thirty lines of Cwsar or Xenophon or Ovid's word puzzles." For this system Mr. Bradby says the term "mental treadmill" should be substituted for that of "mental gymnastics." Altogether, Mr. Bradby is to be congratulated on a very agreeable book,—a bobk.which will appeal to all these who know and understand the heart of the boy. It will, we trust, not be long before Mr. Bradby gives us another and an equally entertaining volume.
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