"Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk." That is true, true, all through. Then comes another class of school-story--the school-story written primarily _for_ boys. Such are the books of Mr. Talbot Baines Reed. These are regarded as somewhat _vieux jeu_ at the present day, but in their own particular line they have never been bettered. They were written to be read by comparatively young boys in a semi-religious magazine; and anybody who has ever attempted to write a tale which shall be probable yet interesting, and racy yet moral, will realise how admirably Mr. Reed has achieved this feat--in such books as _The Willoughby Captains_, _The Master of the Shell_, and _The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's_. Another excellent book is _Godfrey Marten, Schoolboy_. Here Mr. Charles Turley achieves success by the most commendable means. He eschews the theatrical. His story contains no death-bed heroics; no rescues from drowning; no highly-coloured moral crises. He takes as his theme the humdrum daily life--and no one who has not lived through it for weeks at a time knows how humdrum it can be--of a public school, and makes it interesting. He lacks fire, it may be said, but he avoids the sentimentality of the old school and the cynicism of the new. Perhaps the best of all this class is _The Bending of a Twig_, by Mr. Desmond Coke--an absolutely faithful picture, drawn with unerring instinct and refreshing humour. In fact it is so much the real thing that at times it is a trifle monotonous, just because school life at times is a trifle monotonous. But those who know what schoolboys are cannot fail to appreciate the intrinsic merits of this book. It gently derides the stagey incidents and emotional heroics of the old style of school story. Here a small boy comes to Shrewsbury primed with the lore of _Eric_ and _Tom Brown_ and _The Hill_, fully expecting to be tossed in a blanket or roasted on sight. But nothing happens: he is merely ignored. He has laboriously committed to memory a quantity of Harrow slang from _The Hill_: he finds this is meaningless at Shrewsbury. He cannot understand the situation: he has to unlearn all his lessons in sophistication. The whole thing is admirably done. The story strikes a deeper note towards the end. Here we are given a very vivid study of the same boy, now head of his House, struggling between his sense of duty and the fear of unpopularity. Shall he tackle the disturbing element boldly, invoking if necessary the assistance of the Housemaster, or let things slide for the sake of peace? Many a tragedy of the Prefect's Room has hinged upon that struggle; and although Mr. Coke's solution of the problem is not heroic, it is probably all the more true to life. Altogether a fine book, but from its very nature a book for boys rather than grown-ups.