FICTION.
SINGING SANDS.*
Miss Fox SMITH correctly describes her story as an episode. It is not a full-length novel, for the development of the plot is rather abruptly cut short by the war, but within its limits it gives a vivid and realistic picture of life on one of the islands in British Columbia as it strikes anKnglish girl brought up in conventional surroundings in an old-fashioned Lancashire town. Lyndon Travess had joined an aunt and cousin in a trip round the world, but parted company with them on reaching the Pacific coast. The aunt was tiresome, the young man was precious and intolerable. Moreover, Lyndon had the excuse of wishing to look up a long-lost uncle, who had quarrelled with the family and settled on the island of Santiola. It was a rash experiment, none the less, for she was not sure of her welcome, and her reception was disconcerting. Mrs. Travess was a vast slatternly woman ; her daughter Dora, a handsome, sullen, passionate, mutinous girl ; and the uncle a patriarchal old- timer with a volcanic temper. The picture that Miss Fox Smith gives of life in the far North-West is not attractive, with its whirl- pool of nationalities—a veritable colluvies geatium—its rude hospi- tality, lawless pleasures, and squalid hardships. Incidentally she puts into the mouth of her hero a scathing indictment of the immi- gration policy which has tended to freeze out decent British settlers and encourage an influx of the Dago and the " Yaw-yaw Dutch- men." Yet Lyndon, though repelled at first by the coarseness and sordidness of her surroundings, comes in the end to acknowledge that " lives that have so much that is hard in them—that have no books or pictures or music—are bigger and better, lives than most people's who pride themselves on their culture and civilization." We have found it difficult to reconcile this sympathetic view with the portraiture. Jim Drake, the nearest approach to a hero, stands by himself, and would have fallen but for the humanizing influence of Lyndon. The old uncle has some fine qualities, but inspires more repulsion than respect, and his brutality and selfishness and the unholy infatuation of his daughter for a murderous savage of a German are only partially redeemed by a tragic end. This is, in short, a powerful but disquieting study, and the war comes abruptly, if conveniently, to clear up a difficult situation.
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