I always open a new book by GERTRUDE ATHERTON with a pleasant grace-before-meat sensation of being already truly thankful for what I am about to receive. And it is hardly ever that I am disappointed. I do not mean to tell you that her latest story, which bears the attractive title _Perch of the Devil_ (MURRAY), will eclipse the record of all that has gone before; but it need not do that to be well worth reading. It is a tale of mining life, set against a background of claims and veins and drifts and ores--things that I for one delight to read about because of their infinite possibilities, the romance of the gamble that is in them. There is plenty of this gamble in _Perch of the Devil_ (the mountain township where the miners lived). _Gregory Compton_, the hero, makes his pile all right, and has some rare moments in doing it. He would have been happier if he could have enjoyed prosperity, when it came, for its own sake and for that of his pretty wife. But, though he bestowed upon her all the luxuries that successful mining commands--frocks and cars and European travel--it was another woman, _Ora_, who had his heart. And unfortunately she was the wife of his partner. It is with this quartette of characters that Mrs. ATHERTON works out her tale, an unusually small cast for a story of 373 pages; but you will hardly need to be told with what sympathetic and subtle skill she depicts them. Her art is, as always, extraordinarily minute and close. The two women especially are made to live before us with a great effect of actuality. She has wit, too, of a dry, rather grim, kind. I liked her comparison of _Gregory's_ emotion on finding himself in love with _Ora_ to that of a small boy despising himself for a second attack of measles before he discovers the later complaint to be scarlet fever. You must read this book. * * * * *