"It is as beautiful as it is unusual--a wonderfully sympathetic and illuminating study of the mind of the child done with an understanding and sympathy so complete that it is uncanny."--_New York Evening Mail_. THE WOODEN HORSE With hesitation one approaches the first novel of an author whose growth has been so steady as that of Walpole. It is therefore a double delight to find _The Wooden Horse_ a thoroughly good story. Indeed, it has in it certain qualities which should, as Walpole’s work becomes more and more known in mass, be one of his most popular. For it is filled with the youth’s first joy of expression; its excitement about life and its yearning for strange new roads. _The Wooden Horse_ is the story of the Trojans, a family which accepted as tranquilly as did the Duchess of Wrexe the belief that they were the people for whom the world was created. But when Harry Trojan came home after twenty years in New Zealand, with the democracy learned by working his hands, he was the "wooden horse" who boldly carried into the Trojan walls a whole army of alien ideals, which made of that egotistic family a group of human beings content to be human. Interesting are his struggles against stubborn prejudice; dreamlike the pictures of the old Trojan house, rising from the edge of the gray Cornish cliff like an older cliff, yet surrounded by fragrant rose gardens; but what most distinguishes _The Wooden Horse_ is its passionate adoration of the sea, the cliffs, the weather-worn old Cornish houses, where bearded men tell of haunted moors and the winds of the deep. "Reading this story after reading his later ones will not prove the disappointment that such a procedure usually is. Here are no signs of faults outgrown, no weaknesses that will hurt the lover of Walpole’s later works--by which statement we do not wish to be taken as denying that he has developed. Mr. Walpole is a realist with a wide angle vision to whom not only the littered and close ways of short-sighted and selfish men are real, but to whom the large species of nature and her healing quiet are just as real. He sees life steadily and sees it whole--yet keeps his temper and his hopes."--Llwellyn Jones in _The Chicago Evening Post_. "Nowhere has Walpole shown a greater grip upon life’s realities, a stronger appreciation of the elusiveness of man-made conventionalities and a better artistic sense of the dramatic value of contrasts. In describing the subtle changes brought about in the family circle by the presence of one outside influence, Walpole has displayed much skill and literary power. There are no long disquisitions, no democratic preachments, but his dramatic personæ, when brought face to face with new situations, are moved to action according to their light. This is one of the very best novels from the pen of Mr. Walpole, and that is saying much."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_.