utter. The conduct of the young and lovely heroine (as above) and
her single-minded devotion to her lover may be true to nature,
but somewhat alienated my own sympathies, already given to the
first-person-singular English lad who also adored her, and whom both
she and her chosen mate treated abominably. To my thinking, unrequited
devotion has no business in a tale of this sort. Realistic pathos may
have its _Dobbin_ or _Tom Pinch_, but the wild and whirling episodes
of tushery demand the satisfactory finish hallowed by custom.
With this reservation only I can call _Wolf-lure_ about the best
adventure-novel that the present season has produced.

* * * * *

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