familiar class of boys' stories, which, meaning well,
generally baffled their own purpose by attempting to administer morality
and doctrine on what Reed called the "powder-in-jam" principle--a
process apt to spoil the jam, yet make "the powder" no less nauseous;
or, on the other hand, the class of book that dealt in thrilling
adventure of the blood-curdling and "penny dreadful" order. With
neither of these types have Talbot Reed's boys' books any kinship. His
boys are of flesh and blood, such as fill our public schools, such as
brighten or "make hay" of the peace of our homes. He had the rare art
of hitting off boy-nature, with just that spice of wickedness in it
without which a boy is not a boy. His heroes have always the charm of
bounding, youthful energy, and youth's invincible hopefulness, and the
constant flow of good spirits which have made the boys of all time
perennially interesting.

The secret of Reed's success in this direction was that all through
life, as every one who had the privilege of knowing him can testify, he
possessed in himself the healthy freshness of heart of boyhood. He
sympathised with the troubles and joys, he understood the temptations,
and fathomed the motives that sway and mould boy-character; he had the
power of depicting that side of life with infinite humour and pathos,
possible only to one who could place himself sympathetically at the
boys' stand-point in life. Hence the wholesomeness of tone and the
breezy freshness of his work. His boy-heroes are neither prigs nor
milk-sops, but in their strength and weakness they are the stuff which
ultimately makes our best citizens and fathers; they are the boys who,
later in life, with healthy minds in healthy bodies, have made the
British Empire what it is.

A special and pathetic interest attaches to this story of "Kilgorman,"
the last that left Talbot Reed's pen. It was undertaken while he was
yet in the prime of his strength and vigour. The illness which
ultimately, alas, ended fatally had already laid hold on him ere he had
well begun the book. In intervals of ease during his last illness he
worked at it, sometimes in bed, sometimes in his armchair: it is
pleasant to think that he so enjoyed the work that its production eased
and soothed many a weary hour for him, and certainly never was other
than a recreation to him.

The pen dropped from his hand ere he had quite completed the work, yet,
as the book stands here, it is much