To few of those who visit Switzerland, with its incomparable mountains, can it have occurred that, once a man is kept there against his will, it can be a prison as damnable as any other; possibly even more damnable by reason of those same inevitable mountains. British prisoners of war interned there knew that. Mr. R. O. Prowse, in A Gift of the Dusk (Collins), speaks with subtle penetration for those other prisoners, interned victims of the dreadful malady. Of necessity he writes sadly; but yet he writes as a very genial philosopher, permitting himself candidly "just that little cynicism which helps to keep one tolerant." He is of the old and entertaining school of sentimental travellers, but he is far from being old-fashioned. The story running through his observations and modern instances is so frail and delicate a thing that I hesitate to touch it and to risk disturbing its bloom. All readers, save the very young and the very old, will do well to travel with him, from Charing Cross ("I have a childlike fondness for trains. I like to be in them, I like to see them go by") to the peaceful, almost happy end, at the mountain refuge by the valley of the Rhone. They will not regret an inch of the way; and they will derive some very positive enjoyment from the picture of that most melancholy hotel where the story is set.
WORRIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Mounted Gentleman (who has come to grief in a morass). "If I escape this peril I suppose I shall have to build a church here as a thank-offering. An ill site, I fear."
A New Safety Model.
"Lady's strong cycle, 23-in. frame, 28 wheels."
—Cycling.
From an account of the M.C.C. team's match at Colombo: