His First Year at School. By Alfred West. (Fisher Unwin.)—
This is a very cleverly written and even realistic story of school- life, which, as the author indeed expressly says, is intended quite as much for parents as for boys. The latter will doubtless like the fighting in it and the fun and the games, and such unimpeachable slang as "Shut up, you clown. It's caddy rotting a new kid the first day." The former will probably be all the better for reading the experiences of Eliot Hutchinson, whose el, ...ter is all but spoiled by a fussy, pompous father and a too az.xious mollycoddle of a mother. Eliot tries two schools, Abingford—the masterful head of which, Dr. Askham, has the appearance of being drawn from life—and Oldbury. The first he has to leave because of the interference of his parents with the arrangements of the head- master. Yet he is none the worse for having the " nonsense " knocked out of him by snubbing, although that is perhaps a trifle too severe. In Oldbury he learns to work and to assert himself against bullies and swindlers. The two between them, as the author of his history assures us, fashion him into a "manly fellow,—upright, plucky, generous, hard-working, keen on games, enthusiastic about his masters, loyal to his friends." Mr. West, as has been hinted, has a gift of sarcasm, and he shows it to great advantage in such a sketch as that of Mr. Gainsborough Jones, the pretentious master who thinks himself a critic and prophesies that "Another Renaissance is at hand." Altogether His First Year at School is, in literary respects, greatly above the average of gift- books.
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