"one's" and "you's" in your letters; and you find that the author has been caught once or twice. However, the story is good enough to survive that. * * * * * The title of _The Lady of The Lawn_ (JENKINS) has "the ornament of alliteration," but beyond that there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why Mr. W. RILEY should have chosen it. Certainly in his story there is an old lady who spends more of the winter on a lawn than any old lady of my acquaintance could be induced to, even with rugs and a summer-house to make up for the comforts of the fireside; but _Miss Barbara_ and her site really have not so much to do with the tale as its title seems to imply. The love affairs of a young officer who, while blind from wounds, fell in love with his nurse to the extent of becoming engaged to her and didn't recognise her when they met again, are Mr. RILEY'S real concern. _Eric_, who is quite as priggish as his name suggests, falls in love with his sweetheart, as a lady of leisure, all over again, and goes through agonies of remorse on account of his own faithlessness to her as a nurse. _Marion_ or _Constance_, for she uses two names to help the confusion, lets him suffer a while for the good of his soul, but the happy ending, the promise of which is breathed from every line of the book, is duly brought about. His publisher asserts that "there is no living author who writes about Yorkshire as does Mr. RILEY." I daresay he is quite right, but at least as far as the present book is concerned I don't think that I should have bothered to mention it. * * * * * Those--and I suspect they are many--whose first real enthusiasm for ABRAHAM LINCOLN was kindled by Mr. JOHN DRINKWATER'S romantic morality play can profitably take up Mr. IRVING BACHELLER'S _A Man for the Ages_ (CONSTABLE) for an engaging account of the early days of the great Democrat. They will forgive a certain flamboyance about the author's preliminaries. Hero-worship, if the hero be worthy, is a very pardonable weakness, and they should certainly admire the skill and humour with which he has patched together, or invented where seemly, the story of lanky ABE, with his axeman's skill, his immense physical strength, his poor head for shopkeeping, his passion for books, his lean purse and "shrinking pants," his wit, courage and resource. A romance of reasonable interest and plausibility is woven round young Lincoln's story. Perhaps Mr. BACHELLER makes his hero speak a little too sententiously at times, and certainly some of his other folk say queer things, such as, "What so vile as a cheap aristocracy, growing up in idleness, too noble to be restrained, with every brutal passion broad-blown as flush as May?" What indeed! The picture of pioneering America in the thirties is a fresh and interesting one. * * * * *