September 18, 1915.. 
LAND AND WATEE 
oerned. Its value is eiihanoej by Uie changing conditions of 
life in the area studied, and by tlxe migratory habits of the 
tribes among -which Captain Whiffeu travelled. Here a 
phase of savage lifeis pennnneatly recorded bo fully as to 
make the record one that will count among serious anthropo- 
logical and philological works. The numeroua drawings and 
photographs that are intersperppd throughout the work add 
greatly to its interest and Talue, giving, as they do, an excel- 
lent idea of the people, their crafts, and tlieir surroundings. 
•' The Jacket (the Star Rover)." ly Jack London. (Mills end 
. Boon.) 68. 
■ In many of Mr. Jack London's writings it is hard to say 
where liis always vi%-id realism ends and his fantastic romsnco 
begins. Again and again he writes from his own much-lived 
experience, and passes beyond it in grim flights of imagina- 
tion. Most of it, of course, v,-as sheer fantasy; but he made 
the fantasy seem true. And that is what he has done in this 
gruesome story of "The Jacket." Perhaps we are not 
expected to believe that he has given us an authentic account 
ol a California State prison. No doubt Mr. London, who 
knows almost every kind of man, and loves the bottom dog, 
has been acquainted with criminals and ex-convicts. But 
euch superb cruelty as he here attribut-es to the warders of the 
prison, to the doctor, to the gaolers almost without exception, 
and such magnanimity, strength, and character as he gives 
to the three " incorrigibles " among the prisoners, are pre- 
sumably mythical. No horror so extreme is recorded in 
Dostoievski's authentic account of a Siberian prison more 
than half a century ago. Sgffiniwwt, therefore, that we Snd 
here one of those Tealistic-fnnt»at»e backgrounds, dear to Mr. 
London, for the tortured spirit orf Darrtll Standing. Stand- 
ing is condemned to solitary confinement. He is hungry and 
thirsty. He is laced tightly in the strait " pcket " for days 
And even weeks of excruciating agony, end the only human 
intercourse he enjoys is that which he and two others carry 
on by tapping their f-eet according to a secret code. 
In these torments of the "jacket" DarreU Standing 
kams the art of letting his feody " die " and disengaging his 
spirit. Stored up in the subconscious oells of his memory is 
<Jie recollection of his past lives, and he sucoeeds in remem- 
bering and re-living his previous incarnatians. Here we have 
just the kind of theme in which this ingenious author excels. 
He makes the most of it. He takes us back again and again 
into amcient days, each time restoring- his hero, with a 
fltart', to the worst time he has known — the present time. In 
this grim, ingenious, fantastic novel Mr. Lomdon is at liis best. 
" The Secret Son." By Mrs. Henry Bndeney. (Methuen.) 6b. 
Onoe again Mrs. Dudeney has given us a book which 
brings home the conviction tliat she is the finest and most 
powerful English woman novelist of to-day ! Certainly there 
is none other, excepting Mrs. Edith Wharton, whom we 
could put on a higher plane, and Mrs. "Wharton is an Ameri- 
can ; and if we rank her higher, that is only because she has 
a. wider range, because she has skill in a greater variety of 
themes, because she knows more tunes. Mrs. Dudeney 
seldom takes us far from the Sussex villages wliich she knows 
so well. She is best when she is telling us of tlie cottagers, 
or the farmers, or those in higher station who bestow their 
patronage upon the poor. Almost invariably, also, it is the 
gruesome, sordid side of this country life which she reveals, 
and the hard beauty of the Sussex Downs and the occasional 
smell of the sea only serve to emphasise the bitterness of this 
cheerless life. Thus there is one persistent note which runs 
through all her short stories and novels, almost too bitter, 
too squalid, too cynical to be tragic. She shows us passion, 
'strong, upheaving passion, but she does not show it with 
that infinite tenderness which makes the love tragedies of 
Thomas Hardy soothing and appealing; but rather with a 
'sort of savagery, a kind of reckless cruelty, letting us know 
not only that it is to be fraught with disaster, but that it is 
somehow hoUow in itself. 
Every page rings Jbrup — too true, the cynical might say. 
The story is that of a girl who yields to the persuasion and the 
promises of the young squire and is seduced by him ; who, 
when she learns the vanity of those promises, agrees to niarry 
a man oT the village, Morris Wiston — he had been bribed 
with'mo:uey, with a house, and a farm. Afterwards Wiston 
imd Nancy find that "there was something between them 
tiia't made for mating." She found that she had it in her 
"to make a fine art of love," and he, with his " Spanish- 
lookin" head, scornful and passionate," who " had taken 
money'^fcr h'er first, and who hud loved her afterwaids so 
much that 'be c-?uld not bear to takp love u; on the tenure 
"which Tie btldcT it," had put an end to it all and drfwhfed 
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