The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-09
BOOKS About ChiIdren.


Stevenson set the fashion of literary in
terest in the child's psychology, and books
about children, as distinct from children's
books, are now delightful nook of litera-
ture. This child's garden seems chiefly to
be cultivated by ladies, like Mrs. Deland
and Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett. It
was charming fragment of autobiography
that the latter published in 1.-The One I
Knew the Best of ALL" We elders have
forgotten our own childish troubles; child
hood looms as the happiest time of our ex-
istence; we have lost touch of its magma
tive terrors. Mrs. Burnett suffered ago
MES as child because she was told She
would be prosecuted and clapped into
prison if she walked on the grass in the
public gardens: the fear of inadyer-
tently treading on that grass haunted
her like a nightmare, and filled
her dreams with horrid visions of her
forgetful foot grazing blade of grass. She
and as she sat on the bench he lowered
over her in genial majesty, unbending
even to conversation point. One day she
plucked up courage to ask him if he would
arrest her, his little friend should she
trespass on the grass. He replied, '.Why,
certainly" Duty was duty. She then
pointed out to him beseechingly that the
bench on which she sat abutted on the
grass, and that there was ample room be-
tween the top rail and the backless seat
for her diminutive body to fail accident
ally backward upon the sacred precinct.
Would he have to arrest her even then?
Never dreaming of the profound anxiety
underlying the poor little girls query,
the jocose policeman assured her that
he would have no option. And the child
went home to suffer new terrors at the
thought of accidentally toppling backward
from the seat on which her unsuspecting
nurse was wont to deposit her. Similar
childish apprehensions are recorded in
Isabel Fry's "Uninitiated," little book as
are the child's thoughts in "a Discovery in
Morals THE governess-ridden infant pray
ing that God will leave off taking care of
her for just one minute.
In 1.-THE Emu and Home of Rest" the
child, fresh to all impressions of the uni
verse, notices every feature of the way
through which she walks with minute
when we are lost in fog and grope our
way along inch by inch. A Russian nov
elist could scarcely better this:
Nurse steered her course for walk which
led US into most melancholy region. The
first part of it, however, l did not much
mind; the street was lively, the houses and
shops were quiet and comfortable looking.
On the left hand side of the road
was featureless yellow brick wall, from
above which rose steep turf bank. 1t
looked like grass mound of some gigantic
grave, and there was no comfort in know
ing it was called reservoir. On the OPP
posite side were quaint little white plastered
houses for space, leading Immediately to
foreign looking building much bedaubed
with granular stucco, over which presided
a wretchedIy executed stone figure of ST.
Aloysius, as was notified above in large
letters. -. Just beyond the reservoir
on the left a narrow lane went, steeply
down behind block of buildings, which
probably contained some of the machinery