In the present
volume, touching only incidentally on his journeyings and still less
on politics, he has tried to satisfy the thousand-and-one questioners
who, one imagines, have been plaguing him not a little lately as to
those intimate details that really count in the life of a nation. He
tells us for instance how the Russians do business and keep out the
cold; how many of the women you could call pretty, and how much mutton
a Kirghiz can eat. Though some of this is not new, yet the book has,
as a whole, a most vivid freshness, and, if in the end the main effect
is to make one content to live out of Russia, that is a tribute to the
writer's frankness. At the least one is able to rejoice in his final
verdict of unqualified enthusiasm for his hosts, since he found not
merely acquaintances ready to welcome the popular English, but true
and trustworthy friends in all classes of the community.
* * * * *
MRS. OLIVER ONIONS has a light puckish humour and a smooth if
over-hasty pen, and I don't think she quite does her own intelligence
(or ours) full justice in _The Bridge of Kisses_ (HUTCHINSON).
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