wonderful thing is that
these wanton excursions are worth following. True he often apologises
for them, but I do not think that we need take these apologies
seriously. This book is divided into four parts, "The Way to the Land,"
"The Land," "Seed Time," and "Harvest," and in "Seed Time," at any rate,
we have a series of chapters which require not only to be read but to be
thought over. But whether he is out for fun, as in "Bendigo Jones--His
Tree," or for pathos, as in "Morphia," he obtains his effects without
the smallest appearance of effort. And I reserve a special word of
praise for "My Lady of the Jasmine," and commend it to the notice of
those pessimists who hold that only the French and the Americans can
write a good short story. Thank the powers that be for SAPPER.

* * * * *

_The Loom of Youth_ (GRANT RICHARDS) is yet another school story, but
with a difference, the difference being, partly at least, that it is
written by one who has so lately ceased to belong himself to the life
described that his account must carry an authority altogether unusual.
Here, one feels, is that strange and so-soon-forgotten country revealed
for us from within, and by a native denizen. For this alone Mr. ALEC
WAUGH'S book merits the epithet remarkable; indeed, considered as the
work of "a lad of seventeen," its vitality, discretion and general
maturity of tone seem little short of amazing. Realism is the note of
it. The modern schoolboy, as Mr. WAUGH paints him, employs, for example,
a vocabulary whose frequency, and freedom may possibly startle the
parental reader. Apart from this one might call the book an indictment
of hero-worship, as heroism is understood in a society where (still!)
athletic eminence places its possessor above all laws. This in itself is
so old an educational problem that it is interesting to find it handled
afresh in a study of ultra-modern boyhood. The actual matter of the
tale, individual character in its reaction to system, is naturally
common to most school stories; but even here Mr. WAUGH has contrived to
give an ending both original and sincere. Prophecy is dangerous; but
from a writer who has proved so brilliantly that, for once, _jeunesse
peut_, one seems justified in hoping that enlarged experience will
result in work of the highest quality.

* * * * *

Quite a host of moral reflections, none of them very original, flock to
one's mind