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A Warm Reception. (See page 46.)

MY DEAR JACK,

Your birthday has come round again--andhere, with every good wish, is another book foryour shelf. No mailed knights this time; our storyis of the present day. Yet you shall find paynimhordes as many and as fierce as you please; yes, andchivalry itself, or I am much mistaken,--although wemay not spell it with a capital C. For it is a theory ofmine--"Old Uncle and his theories!" I hear you say!--thatthe spirit of chivalry is as much alive to-day asever, and finds as free a scope. And if chivalry is, asI take it to be, the championing of the weak and theoppressed, no region of the world offers a wider field thanCentral Africa, where there is still ample work for thecountrymen of Livingstone and Gordon. Some day,perhaps, you may yourself visit that land, and comeback with as deep a sense of its glamour and pathosas the rest of us. Meanwhile, since even at Harrowthe sky is not always clear, why not on some rainyafternoon pack up your traps and transport yourselfin imagination to Uganda with Tom Burnaby? If youreturn with a certain stock of information about t