Throughout a vagabond career that began in happiness on a farm and finished, thankfully, amongst the fields, _Frank Rainger_ followed always the pathway of the broader experience. Followed it so stoutly and was such good company on the long road that whether it was high holiday at Cranbrook Circus with _Maggie Coalbran_, or a fight for the hopeless cause of the Southern States in shell-torn Vicksburg, or only the keeping of eternal lazy summer with the peons of Yucatan, I was altogether content to go humbly forward with him, convinced that, as it was written, so and no otherwise should it be. Even when he deservedly failed to become a shining light in the literary firmament to which he aspired--an unheard-of piece of audacity on the part of his authoress--I did not rebel. Miss SHEILA KAYE SMITH has an essential clarity of visualisation, a deep and still reserve of unforced pathos and an exquisite sense of the haunting word, that combine with a most competent alertness of movement to make her latest artistic success, _The Challenge to Sirius_ (NISBET), a book for which I can hardly find adequate words of praise. Most admirable of all, perhaps, is a strange faculty she has shown for making one satisfied that her people should remain perennially rather poor and unambitious and dull, and should even grow old without occasioning us regret. With the deep under-drift of the writer's philosophy one may not be completely in accord, but certainly it will worry nobody, while the unity and beauty of her methods hold one in willing bondage from beginning to end. This is real literature, and everyone should read it. * * * * * Without any very exceptional gifts as a story-teller Fleet-Surgeon T.T. JEANS, R.N., scores heavily off most writers of boys' adventure tales by having actually lived the life he describes. Here, for instance, in _A Naval Venture_ (BLACKIE) we do get the real thing, and boys would be well-advised to sample it and see if it is not preferable to the kind of adventurous fiction produced so prolifically for their amusement. Not that this yarn is lacking in adventure; indeed it is concerned with the Gallipoli campaign, from the landings until the evacuation, and anything more adventurous it would be hard to imagine. In reading this story of _The Orphan, The Lamp-post, Bubbles, The Hun, Rawlins and The Pink Rat_, one feels that the author actually knows these "snotties," with their high courage, animal spirits and elementary humour. It is in fact history spiced with fiction. Of all the characters my vote goes to _Kaiser Bill_, for although, being a tortoise, he performed no deeds of actual gallantry, he carried good luck with him wherever he went. Besides, his name might annoy the ALL-HIGHEST. Mr. JEANS made an extremely good shot when he drew his bow at _A Naval Venture_. * * * * *