Library), is a collection of stories, one or two of them in the vein that made Mr. Jacobs famous, others serious and sensational, but all thoroughly readable. Most of them have appeared before in magazines, The illustrations, by Maurice Greiffenhagen, are excellent.
"The Diseutanglers," by Andrew Long, with delightfully drawn illustrations by H. J. Ford (Longmans' Colonial Library), is a book to read and re-read. It is a collection of stories, all marked by the distinction that characterises all the multifarious work of Mr. Long, tied together by a device that it is a most delightful story in itself. The book is full of imagination enlivened by delicate touches of humour and satire. There is a good deal of it, and the reader will Wish it were twice as long as it is, As it ends with each lady of the Society of The Disentanglers. getting a cheque on Courts for £25,000, and with each man getting a charming wife, it undoubtedly ends happily.
"The Four Feathers," by A. E. W. Mason (Bell's Indian and Colonial Library), is the best novel that the deservedly popular author of "The Courtship of Morris Buckler" has yet produced, The hero is afflicted with the fear that he is a coward, and he begins the book with an act of moral cowardice that makes his three friends and his lady-love each send him a white feather. How brilliantly and through what dangers he re-thieves his reputation is the theme of Mr. Mason's stirring story. The scenes are mostly in Egypt and the Soudan and the author shows an intimate acquaintance with the locality he describes and its recent history, and the reader is led up to a happy ending through a series of admirably tckd events in which the limits of probability are never overstepped. ~The Four Feathers" is one of the books of the year, Readers of " The Compleat Bachelor," a book full of charm from the first page to the last, will be sadly disappointed with " Tales from a Far Riding," by Oliver Onions (Murray's Imperial Library). It contains five stories of som" impossible district in the north of England, each more grim and ghastly than the other, and it is a pity to see high ability wasted on such unhappy subjects.
"The Dream and the Man," by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds (Murray's Imperial Library, Smaller Series), is an extremely original and most readable story, with just enough of the improbable in it to make it deeply interesting, Some of our readers will remember a story of a haunted house in Scotland, which appeared not long ago in the "Spectator," and the truth of which was vouched for by the Editor. The motive of "The Dream and the Man" is the same. The heroine, a real flesh-and-blood London girl who gets married early in the book in most original cireumstances, is, in what she believes to be dreams, the ghost that haunts an old country-house that ultimately turns out to belong to her husband. It is a fascinating story, admirably told, and the happy ending is led unto 38 sweetly and naturally that whoever takes the book up will hardly be able to resist reading the last one or two chapters over and over again. It is a book to keep as well as to read.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.