El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-12-09
The LIBRARY
TABLE

q TABLE :
q Written Especially for the HERALD. s
dS~OSS ONNxN6
THE BOOK OF '.KNIGHT. AND BAR,
BARA," by David Starr Jordan. published
Price slbo
Rarely do children's books please
both the little ones aud their elders.
Sucn books as the Alice books and
Water Babies are wonderful excep-
tions. Most children's books are too
dilute in their ideas to be food for
grown up thoughts and in fact are not
really in themselves particularly pleas
ing-it is only because of that good
humored imagination, transmitting
every thing in life into gold, that the
child possesses so abundsntly, that
makes him tolerate and play with any
amusement in it. This God
given spirit which makes a
String OF spools serve as ev-
erything from q locomotive and train
of cars to q general and his armies or a
queen and her ladies,is one that makes
the little ones tolerant of much other
wise intolerable stuff that is written
Starr Jordan's is of the right material.
1t is not 80 perfect IS the Alice books,
but it has something of the same quail
ty. 1t is whimsical, droll, contrary, nom
sensical and full of that funny serious
ness. that sly poking fun at the grown
up world, that delights children I'm
moderately ard is fun for their
elders.
Children appreciate q pun or quip,
- o1u n a
poem about the sad plight OF the Six
Kings of Yvetot who cast down their
eyes to the floor, lent their ears. threw
their arms about wildly and lost their
heads. tells of an anatomical emergency
that hey will understand. Another
story 'Once upon time there wasn't
any king and be didn't have any
throne and didn't live in any CASTLE is
a osolutely new fairy story and whim-
sical enough for any fuE-loving small
girl or boy. The classical stories of
the Phoenix, of Medusa, of the Trojan
wooden horse, of o pheus and Fury
dice, of the Leprechaun, are quaint
mixtures of the old, old ide as with the
modern child's thought. The child's
instructive ssi , desire e.. to apply apply
everything or to his his sp%tsd email im
aginings gives these old stories new
air, but the gist of the old Is always
there. The story of how griffins grow,
and of thu adventures of one who trav-
eled much about the earth, meeting
with strange adventures in GsOrgia and
China, and of his happy end. with pic
lures of the griffin tree, is one of the
gsyest in the book and explains many
things. The account of how the Sun
went way up to an island in Iceland for
a birthday for Barbara, and how the
Moon took it back thai night when
Bar bara was through with 1t, is snoth-
err that will help to explain things to
the inquiring small person. But all of
the stories are good ones.
The story of the stories is interest |
ing. They are the very ones that Da-
land Stanford Junior university, tells |
to his boy and girl friends. They were |
never intended for publication, but a |
took them down aud |
while Professor Jordan was away, |
% any copies were made and given to
little children to illustrate. Hundreds
of little ones, mostly California chill
dren, drew pictures for the book, and
the compiler chose from the multitude
those which are given in the book.
This childish art is crude and print
tive, but it is q queer fact that children
take to these pictures immensely.
They enjoy them much more than they
DO the accurate and elegant
drawings that usually are made
Tor chil6ren's books. This
in itself is an interesting phase
Of child study-this primitive
ness of theirs. The whole book IS in
.eresting to the thoughtful father or
mother for this same reason. The lit
lie one in one way is primitive. and
his book and It's pictures are of his
world and yet the child Is on the
threshold of all that Is complex and
perfected, after man has lived aud
wrought SO many centuries, and the
book is on the threshold too.
The Cosmopolitan for December has an
attractive, though atherlirreverent ar
icle on the mystery of beauty, by
edgar Saltus, with plentiful illustra-
ions of be auty in women, as it Is seen
n famous paintings. Frank Stockton g
tory. The Cot and the Rill would
- a good story from anybody else but
8 rather disappointing from FRANK
stock ton, who used to written variably
y funny tales. Olga Neither
ole's account of her struggles for
u ccess is decidedly disheartening to
he stage struck, but IL full of pre- t.
y photogra phs of herself in her success
ul parts. Olive Sohreiner continues
Ter arguments on womau's rights and,
hough her deductions seem bit ex-
there is no doubt that she
las gone to the root of the trouble
a