MR. BART KENNEDY'S NEW BOOK, Being Some Leaves from a By BART KENNEDY, Author of "The Wandering Romanoff,” “Darab's Wine Cup," etc., etc. Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, Gilt, Top Edge Gilt, 68. Mr. RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, in the Idler, says :-"A Man Adrift' has held me as few recent books have power to do. The book is 'real' because it has first been really lived, and then been really written. Mr. Kennedy's book has held me, not only by its reality, but by its courage, its pity, its humour, its all-embracing humanity, its quiet fierceness. 'A Man Adrift' is a brave book." Mr. A. B. WALKLEY in the Morning Leader. "To any jaded person in search of a sharp tonic I confidently recommend A Man Adrift.”” County Gentleman.-"This is the book of a strong man. It has vigour, originality, and power, and comes as a refreshing change after the maudlin sentimentality of most modern stories. Mr. Kennedy has a characteristic style. He writes in short, crisp sentences that are at once direct and fearless. It is mainly his own story that he tells in this strangely fascinating volume." Daily Telegraph.-"It is vivid and strong, touched with that picturesque, vigorous fancy with which intellect illuminates and interprets the life of action. Mr. Bart Kennedy has talent of a strong order. He shows it clearly in this latest book, in the strength with which he puts these scenes before us, in his power of conveying his impressions, and his picturesque point of view. No one can read this tramp's reminisences without adding to his knowledge of human nature, and to his comprehension of a somewhat unknown walk of life. 1 OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE BEING THE CONFESSIONS OF EVELYN GREY, HOSPITAL NURSE. CHAPTER I WHY I BECAME A NURSE HERE has always been a certain amount of romantic mystery supposed to be attached to any girl adopting our profession. This may be because lately it has been a favourite device of the novelist to invest his more or less interesting heroine -or his designing heroine with equal facility-with the garb of an Hospital Sister. Or perhaps the interest so often shown in us is due to the knowledge that we are constantly day by day, brought face to face with the great problems of Life and Death, and are accustomed to weigh them one against the other, watching with the cold, passionless eye of science to see which way the balance will turn. But in my own case, the choice of this profession was not entirely actuated by this motive, and I think I may truthfully assert that I insensibly drifted into the work which has since become so powerful a factor in my life. My school-days-a more or less chaotic period of my existence had come to a sudden and an inglorious conclusion. The authorities of the High School I was attending had been paralysed by the discovery, among some French exercises, of a manuscript, which was described on its cover as a farcical comedy in two acts, and proved on perusal to be a laborious lampoon upon the College and its teachers. An incapable "round-hand" betrayed its authorship, and I was forthwith suminoned before a tribunal of the School authorities. Dramatic literature had not then reached its present inartistic eminence, and the convenient days of "adaptation" were to some extent unknown; so that unsupported by this latterday plea, which so artlessly and comfortably shifts the responsibility, and so gracefully takes the praise, I was forced to admit the authorship, and, after being made the subject of an appropriate "object-lesson"term so dear to the modern Radical Agitator-before the assembled scholars, I was then and there ignominiously expelled. The disgrace of expulsion from a public school was felt most keenly in my family circle, especially as a brilliant scholastic career, for which I had been designed (without having shown the slightest aptitude for any one branch of study), was thus effectually closed to me for ever. I was left severely |