Some school stories may be mentioned together :—Jones the Mysterious,
by Charles Edwards (Blackie and Son, 2s.), and Every Inch a Briton, by Meredith Fletcher (same publishers, 3s. 6d.)— The first is something of a new departure. It is a comic extrava- ganza, and fairly successful. It may be imagined that a boy endowed with what Homer calls the "Helmet of Hades" (making him invisible at pleasure) could create some strange situations, and this is what Jones does. We are really obliged to Mr. Edwards for giving us this variety ; what his boy clients, who have a way of being matter-of-fact, may think about it is another matter. Every Inch a Briton is a story of a more familiar kind. School concerts, games, friendships, bullyings, quarrels, jealousies, lessons—which are not more introduced than they should be—of such things is the farrago /tibei/i. Mr. Fletcher has plenty of excitement and novelty for his readers.—That Scholar- ship Boy, Boy, by Emma Leslie (R.T.S., le.), is yet another variety. Climbing the educational ladder may quite conceivably be at times an unpleasant task. We hope and believe that a boy from a Board- school who could win his way into a first-grade school would have no reason to complain of his schoolfellows' behaviour. Still, the dis- agreeables which Horace Howard has to encounter at " Torring- ton's "—we cannot make out whether this was a public school or no, for the name is ambiguous—are not impossible. Miss Leslie makes a good story out of them, but she is not quite at home in her subject, and if she could have worked out the end without changing Howard's social status we should have liked it better. —Tom Andrews, by Arthur Chandler (Elliot Stock, 6s.), is a "Story of Board-school Life," told by the author with much liveliness and vigour. The football match has the look of an expert's work. Then various familiar difficulties of school-life are dealt with, and that in a rational and manly way. It is good to hear that some at least of the East-Enders are being trained to be what English boys should be.—Heads or Tails? By Harold Avery. (T. Nelson and Sons. 5s.)—This book is in two parts. The " friendship " of which it is a tale began at school, and was carried on in the world. And the "world" part of it is, to our mind, considerably better than the school. Any- how, there is nothing in it but what is sound and wholesome.
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