Since the opening pages of _Calvary Alley_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) are concerned with choir-boys and a cathedral and a rose-window, things to which one gives, without sufficient reason, an association exclusively of the Old World, I was a little startled, as the action proceeded, by the mention of cops and dimes and trolly-cars. Of course this only meant that I had forgotten, ungratefully, the country in which any story by ALICE HEGAN RICE might be expected to be laid. Anyhow, _Calvary Alley_ proves an admirable entertainment, a tale of a girl's expanding fortunes, from the grim slum that gives its name to the book, through many varied experiences of reform schools, a bottling factory and membership of the ballet, up to the haven of matrimony. Through them all, _Nance_, the heroine, carries a very human and engaging personality, so that one is made to see the young woman who is clasped to the heroic breast on the last page as the logical development of the ragged urchin stamping her bare foot into the soft cement of _Calvary Alley_ on the first. Moreover--wonder of wonders for transatlantic fiction!--the author is able to write about children, and the contrasted lives of rich and poor city dwellers, without lapsing into sentimentality, _O si sic omnes!_ But either American bishops are strangely different from the English variety, or Mrs. RICE, following Mr. WELLS'S example, has permitted herself an episcopal burlesque. In either case the resulting portrait is hardly worthy of an otherwise admirably-drawn collection of original characters. * * * * *