wall you have only to open _The North Door_.

* * * * *

A young clerk in an insurance office, who wanted to go as a missionary to
India, is the hero, if there is one, of Mrs. ALICE PERRIN'S latest novel,
_The Vow of Silence_ (CASSELL). I have never read a book about India which
made such an ambition seem more courageous, for it gives such a hot and
thirsty picture of that country when _Harold Williams_ at last reaches it
that it is positively uncomfortable to read it in Summer weather. _Harold_
and his brother and sister missionaries live in a state of stuffy
discomfort which soon undermines his health and leaves him no defence
against the charms of _Elaine Taverner_, who has a large cool drawing-room
and dainty frocks, and a young soldier lover and an old scholar husband,
and all the other things we expect of pretty young women in Anglo-Indian
novels. Poor _Harold_, consumed at once by a zeal which makes him long to
save _Elaine's_ soul and a passion which makes him embrace a parcel of her
_lingerie_, very naturally loses the remains of his reason and paves the
way for her marriage with her lover by obligingly pushing the elderly
husband into the jaws of a crocodile. If it were more convincing it would
be a painful story--in some hands it might have been a great one; as it is,
Mrs. PERRIN seems for once to have missed her opportunity.

* * * * *

If the publisher of _About It And About_ had told me on the wrapper that
Mr. D. WILLOUGHBY has an excellent fund of literary reminiscence, on which
he draws for the modelling of a very pretty epigrammatical style, I should,
after reading the book, have agreed with him heartily. What Mr. T. FISHER
UNWIN does say about these short essays, which embrace most of the subjects
on which people have violent opinions, is that the author's "point of view
is that of the natural historian making an unprejudiced examination." An
unprejudiced man, I take it, is a man whose sentiments are the same as
mine, and I happen to disagree with Mr. WILLOUGHBY as profoundly as
possible on several of the themes he has chosen. On fox-hunting, for
instance, which he considers a more decadent sport than bull-fighting; and
on Ulster, which he attacks bitterly by comparison with the rest of
Ireland, for cherishing antiquated political animosities and talking about
the Battle of the Boyne. But will Mr. WILLOUGHBY not have been hearing of
"the c