ause of its rather Baedeker-like
qualities, _Drums Afar_ will be found quite a restful and readable book.

* * * * *

Somewhere in the course of the tale that gives its title to _The Blower of
Bubbles_ (CHAMBERS) the character who is supposed to relate it denies that
he is a sentimentalist. I may as well say at once that, if this denial is
intended to apply also to Mr. ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER, who wrote the five
stories that make up the volume, a more comprehensive misstatement was
never embodied in print. Because, from the picture on the wrapper,
representing a starry-eyed infant conducting an imaginary orchestra, to the
final page, the book is one riot of sentiment--plots, characters and
treatment alike. Not that, save by the fastidious, it must be considered
any the worse for this; even had not Mr. BAXTER'S hearty little preface
explained the conditions of active service under which it was composed,
themselves enough to excuse any quantity of over-sweetening. I will not
give you the five long-shorts in detail. The first, about a German child
and a young man with heart trouble, shows Mr. BAXTER at his worst, with the
sob-stuff all but overwhelming a sufficiently nimble wit. My own favourite
is the fifth tale, a spirited and generous tribute to England's war effort.
(I should explain that the book, and I suppose the author also, is by
origin Canadian.) This last story, told partly in the form of letters to
his editor in New York by an American officer and journalist, has all the
interest that comes of seeing ourselves as others see us; though I could
not but think that the narrator erred in making the haughty _Lady Dorothy_,
daughter of his noble hosts, exclaim, on the entrance of a footman with a
letter, "Pardon me, it's the mail." So there you are. If you have a taste
for stories that make no pretence of being other than fiction pure and
simple, limpidly pure and transparently simple (yet witty too in places),
try these; otherwise pass.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Pedestrian._ "DROPPED ANYTHING, MISTER?"

_Motorist._ "YES."

_Pedestrian._ "WHAT IS IT?"

_Motorist._ "MY GIRL."]

* * * * *

"UTOPIA.

Miss Ruby ---- Sundayed under the parental."--_Canadian Paper._

We congratulate Utopia on its ideal language.

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