_Running Wild_ (SIMPKIN) is the expressive title of a collection of child-memories by the late Mr. BERTRAM SMITH, whom readers of _Punch_ will remember by the pseudonym "BIS." They can here learn from a sympathetic little introduction by Mr. WARD MUIR under what conditions of a brave but losing battle with ill-health this delicate and vivacious work was written. When I say that these recollections (which I decline to call by any word implying more artifice) illustrate their author, I give you their measure for honesty and charm combined. Honesty first of all; Mr. SMITH'S young barbarians running wild and, one conjectures, rapidly reducing their elders to a like condition, have the compelling effect of unsentimental truth. Few clouds of glory, for example, trail about the protagonists of "A Day," a tribute to the joyous intoxication of a day-long orgie of naughtiness deliberate and wholly unrepented. You will find much in these pages to waken half-forgotten and perhaps secret pleasures. Thus there was for me a personal echo in the rejection as a seaside entertainment of castle-building and the ordered sequence of the tides in favour of the infinitely more variable delight of running water and a sufficiency of mud. Perhaps I have said enough to suggest the charm of an engaging volume, itself a memorial of one whose kindly laughter will be missed by many. * * * * * [Illustration: _Young Alf._ "CHUCK IT, JIMMY. 'E AIN'T GOT A KIND FACE."]