Peter. By F. Hopkinson Smith. (Hodder and Stoughton. Os.) —This
is another American novel, but most of the scene is laid in New York, and although the latter part of the story passes in the country, the characters are most of them New Yorkers. The reader will be at a loss to determine the meaning of the two mystic words, " Primitive Man," printed at the bottom of the cover; they are not included in the title-page, and there seems to be no allusion to them in the book. Neither Peter nor John Breen, the hero, is in the very least like a primitive man, though the author may possibly conceive that John, or Jack rather, is primitive in having kept his principles pure throughout his contact with the modern world. The story is interesting, but the author's power of writing is not always quite equal to the plan which he has sketched out for himself.
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