[In the following review, the critic praises the stories of Osbourne's Wild Justice for their "vividness and beauty and straightforwardness. "]

The collective title of Mr. Lloyd Osbourne's nine tales refers apparently to the rough equity of the South Sea Islands; to the justice of sailors safely away from legal machinery, of natives, and of the two in their relations together. It also, we fancy, has reference to that deeper justice which makes a great passion worth while, whatever the tragic consequences, and which led Baudelaire to exclaim: "Mais qu'importe l'éternité de la damnation à qui a trouvé dans une seconde l'infini de la jouissance!" For in these stories where white man meets brown, the nature of the former is stirred to its primitive depths.

Many have been moved by the scene in Westward Ho! where the sailors are found living with native women in the wild. It will be remembered that Joseph Conrad has treated the interaction of black and white with matchless insight; has used it, indeed, as a searchlight on our civilisation. Mr. Osbourne is not so subtle a psychologist as the author of Lord Jim. He is more of a story-teller. In the best of this nine, Jack Haviland—yearning to leave the squalor aboard and the debauchery ashore of life in a tramp's fo'c'stle, and to have a home—deserts from "the sea, that took all and gave nothing." A Samoan girl and her kinsfolk develop all the good which was latent in his nature, and he works for them as they never could themselves. Their life is a successful idyll, until the Powers harry the islands, and then—the end. If the psychology of the story holds good—and we think it does—"The Renegade" is a very fine effort. It is told with the vividness and beauty and straightforwardness that distinguish this volume. Wild Justice is a book to be recommended. There are men in it.