Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-03
THE CRITICS REVIEW.
Books Examined for All Sorts of Chill
dreD, Little and Big.
THE CENTURY'S GOOD DICTIONARY.
Mr.. Lecky's Faithful History Of the Modern
English Nation.
HOW IT TREATS THE IRISH QUESTION

I.
Let us begin at the beginning-with the
babies. Here is 'The Baby's Journal, Z"
CA. d. F. Randolph & Co.. J. R. Weldin &
Co., 81 50), with title page bestrewn. like
a nursery floor, with rattles, and
balls. and tops, and dolls and a
rabbit and baby. shoe in the middle.
And then follow spaces and pages
for all the happenings of an eventful baby
hood-the naming, and the weighing, and
the christening gifts. No chronicle is kept
of tumbles. That, perhaps, would take too
many pages. The little crumpled shoes
near the end of the book may stand for that
All through runs the pleasantest chain of
golden verses, capitally selected; beginning
with ''The BARN That is Born on the Sab
bath Day." and ending with this bit of
rhyme about the little feet:
Two little feet, so small that both may nestle
In one caressing hand,
Two tender feet upon the untried border
OF life's mysterious land.
All! Who may read the future' For our darling
We crave all blessings sweet,
And pray that He who feeds the crying ravens,
VIII guide the Baby's feet.
Alice Bray compiled and designed this
pleasant little gift for new mother.
"Baby's Kingdom" Lee & Shepard, j.
r. Weldin & co., is by Annie f. Cox.
Within these golden covers, and upon these
wide, fair pages the mother may write her
story of the Progress of the Baby"-a much
more agreeable and hopeful progress" than
any which Hogarth put into his pictures.
Mary, the Virgin Mother, "kept all these
sayings in her heart" as all good mothers
do. But here is a way of keeping them in
a book also. The old blank leaves between
the Testaments of the family Bible have
grown and fowered out into this beautiful
volume. The date of baby's birth; baby's
weight, increasing month by month; the
gifts and the christening; the first words,
the first tooth, the first step-all have places
for the pen OF the chronicler. Bits of
poetry, admirably chosen, and attractively
set upon the page, lullabys and slumber
songs, and sweet pictures, and baby's
progress at the end, make royal book for
"Baby's Kingdom"
And now, the boysl Good books for boys
that is what all good fathers and mothers
ly, are two or three excellent ones this week,
which The Critic can commend as interest
ing, profitable and uplifting-real good,
healthy books, about possible boys, who are
good company for Pittsburg boys. First,
''King Tom and the Runaways" Cd. Apple
ton & Co.; j. r. Weldin & Co. }, bv Louis
Pendleton-the adventures of two boys in a
Georgia swamp. Snakes and bears make
things interesting for this pair of lost
urchins. Stories told by plantation fire.
sides are told again, for our reading in the
warmth of natural gas. The ways and man
ners and looks of things in Georgia before
any unwelcome visitors came marching
through" those regions are admirably pict-
ured. Some old boys will enjoy this book
as much as the young boys.
'From Boyhood to Manhood" is one of
those helpful books, of which there cannot
we'll be too many, which show how some
real boy turned nbling-blocks into step
ping stones and made a success out of life
which started out along hard lines. Benja-
min Franklin is the hero of ''From Boyhood
to Manhood" (James 81. Earle; j. R.
Weldiu & Co. 81 50.) William H. Thayer,
the author, has also written, for the reading
of young people, the lives of Washington
and Lincoln and Of Garfield and Grant.
These books are pretty sure to make the
boys who read them better citizens and bet
ter men. The life of Benjamin Franklin
readily lends itself to purposes of edifca-
ton. It is full of texts. Few men have made
more OF themselves than this resolute, per-
sistent, industrious boy, who at the start
made up his mind to succeed, and did sue
ceed. Mr.. Thayer has done his work we'll.
He has not much to say of franklin as .
public man. He wants to show what made
Franklin the kind of public man he was .
''The Naturalist in Silurla" (Gebbie &
Co.; j. R. Weldin & Coz will interest all
boys who, like Franklin, are hungry after
knowledge. Captain Mayne Reid is the
author name, classic in the sort of
literature which boys are fond OF. You
know at once, when you sit down to one of
his stories, that there is to be a good deal of
story with good deal more of outdoors in
its breezy pages. Here is the outdoors
without the, story. 'Siluria" is a title with
a geological and prehistoric sound. You
think of fossils. But "Silurian" meant at
the beginning of its use the ancient rocks
discovered in that southern part of Wales
where the Silures lived, according to
Ptolemy. And 1t is these southern counties
which the author has in mind in naming
this last published of his many books. Here
Captain Mayne Reid lived. And in this
book he tells all about it; how the seasons
come and go, and how the birds and beasts
in the Welsh woods.
"Thine, Not Mine" (Roberts Bros; j. r.
Weldin s. Co., 81 25). is q sequel to
Changing Base" one of the best boys
books that was ever written. There is big
bat on the cover, to prophesy that another
baseball story is inside. And the prophecy
is a true one. Good boys and bad boys enter
into the story as they do into the life of every
day; and get their deserts as they do, too.
The tone OF the book in its dealings with re-
ligion, from which it makes no pretense OF
fighting shy, is manly and helpful. So it is
all the way through. A capital book for
Sunday school library, or for any bright
boys bookshelf
After these excellent things for the boys,
here is book for girls, as good as any OF
them, "Maroussia, a Maid of Ukraine"
(Dodd, Mead & Co., Presbyterian book
store). 1t is we'll bound, in the first place,
and we'll printed, though the pictures are
the French, and the translation is so we'll
done that one is not reminded of 1t any
where. The style has that simplicity which
is so pleasant in the shorter stories OF Tolstoi.
The scene is laid in Ukraine. The Cossacks
of Ukraine were like soldiers fighting in a
four square fort, with different enemy on
each side-Russia and Poland, and the
Turks and the Tartars. AT last choosing Gas
they thoueht) the lesser evil, they surren-
dered to Russia. But they speedily began
to repent them OF their bargain. They be-
gan to regret their old independence now
taken away. They wanted it back. And,
there came an uprising,
a revolution. 1t had its heroes-and
its traitors, and, OF course, there
was failure at the end of
it-so much of failure that tn, very name
of the Ukraine has now given way 10 the