The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-20
HOLIDAY MAGAZINES.

rbare has been much written about School of Journalism, but dare say there is no better school of journalism. or per hape better say of Literature, today than the St. Nicholas League Department oi the St. Nicholas Magazine. The League appeals to the young writers and illustrators in embryo. to the child ren of today who will be the writers' readers and critics of tomorrow.
 know of no better education Tor child along these lines than careful study of the work of the children m the League and the making an effort to them selves work with the League, ana 70 ~ih Prizes for poems on given subjects. for stories, for papers on "Favorite Episodes of Fiistofy." Prizes for photographs and drawings. The subjects for these efforts are given, out this is open field for in- genuity, for newness of fancy or device. The child who begins literary career with such work as this will hardly send of first manuscript as I did tied with violet cords and tassels. ruthlessly torn from valentines of a few years agone. loves token sacrificed for offerings at literature's shrines. The department Books and Reading Is equally educa- tional and entertaining. Young readers are encouraged in this department to make lists of the books that they like best. of books that have helped them most. prizes are offered for the best lists. Again the young readers are encouraged to write critiques of the books which have most pleased them. There Is your reviewer of the future. The Nature and Science Department cannot be too highly commended
 These departments are in themselves an ample education for a child already fitted with the three Rs.
 The magazine paper Is far and away the best and brightest child's magazine ever published, with the exception of that most perfect publication now defunct, Wide Awake. There was a fneness. 8 helicacy, distinction about Wide Awake that keeps its memory green. 1t is per- petiial grief to those who loved 1t to know that it is gone forever. St. Nicholas Is nearest of all youths publication to its past away perfection. The Bachelor s Dolfis a good Christmas time tale. Ralph D. Paine writes so delightfully of A Chi nese Army that cheered for Yale that all his readers will wish he would do 1t again, or something like it.
 President Washington's Turkey Dinner is a pleasing bit. Many a story of his toric interest get lines out of print, many of these that have heard told and re- told around Southern flresides would ind welcome. in the world of letters. Nay they come to good black and white print some day. Julian King Calford writes entertainingly of The Signs of Old Lon don.--St. Nicholas, Century O., New York City.
 The Thackery letters are absorbingly interesting. The good Englishman whom we all love did not seem to find much to like in Charleston society, but then no Society seemed to be found overpleasing to him. He gives tho following sketch of his amusement at the negroes: "They interest me very much especially the lit- tie pickaninnies with their queer faces and ways which are just exactly half way between the absurd and the pretty, and so create in my mind a strange feeling be- twen pleasure and pity. Yesterday where I dined felt my elbow pinched by very little hand, and looking down saw such a queer little elfin bit of a brat with such a queer smile and grimace holding me up q silver basket with bread. And the day before at dinner there was one little negro boy with a great peacock's feather fan whisking the flies away. whilst another niggerlin yet smaller one deputed to do nothing but watch the process of the din ner, which he did standing back against A sideboard, and making endless faces at the child with the fan. The goodness of the masters to these children is very pleasant to witness. wish some of our countrymen could see it Gen tury Magazine. New York.
 Nothing in current literature is more charming than Mrs. Richmond Ritchie's s Blacksticl Papers. The sketch of Eliza Horace Smith is the perfection of loving memorial of a bright keen-witted wo- man whom "all must have delighted to listen to- Mrs. Anne Russell Marble ''The Passing of a Literary Landmark" writes of the demolition Of the Old CorneP Bookstore of Boston.
 Robert Loveman, whom Alabama claims for her own, he being, believe, a gradu- ste of the State University. and having spent his youth in Tuscaloosa, has this attractive verse in Critic:
 Poets.
 Byron, Shelley, Keats and Poe,
 Wrath and rapture. wit and woe;
 Dreamers, dcbauchees divine,
 Frantic with 8 frenzy fine,
 Hearts of fire, souls of snow,
 Byron, Shelley, Keats and Poe.
 Byron, Shelley, Keats and Poe,
 O sweet pain the poets know!
 Doomed. and damned, and crowned, and
 sought.
 To bliss upon the wings of thought;
 Brain and vein, and pulse aglow,
 Byron, Shelley, Keats and Poe.