Perhaps some of those who remember J. BURGON BICKERSTETH captaining the Oxford soccer team four years ago may be surprised to find him serving his apprenticeship at sky-piloting in Alberta. And very manfully and sincerely and tactfully he does it, to judge by the account which he modestly renders in _The Land of Open Doors_ (WELLS, GARDNER). With headquarters at Edmonton he rides and drives or swims (when the floods are out or the bridges down) across this untidy country from shack to shack, holding odd little services in dormitories and kitchens, and evidently making friends with the rough pioneer folk, railway men and small farmers, of his assorted acquaintance. The discouragements of such a task must be immense; indeed, they peep through the narrative, reticently enough, for grousing habits are not in the equipment of this staunch and cheery young parson. His notes of this land of promise and swift achievement are admirably observed. He has the gift of characterisation with humour, is clever at reproducing evidently authentic and entertaining dialogues, and has caught the Western idiom, not only in these set reproductions, but unconsciously in his own writing, which is singularly straightforward and attractive, nor burdened with the sort of cleverness which the young graduate is apt to air. Neither is there anything of the prig in his composition--his book abounds in reported words which an earlier generation of clerics would certainly have censored--but when he is saddened by the indifference, the unplumbed materialism and what he sees as the wickedness of his scattered flock he might remember for his comfort that valid and sane distinction of the casuists between formal and material sin. Anyway, good luck to him for a sportsman! * * * * *