Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-12-16

is easi,v ,ae fayorire with the girls and John I. TrDGbridge and HoraJio Niger are probably the fats favorites- In England. popularity has fastened everlastingly upon two men who ha q been read of by young Britishers for several generations. These are Gao- tain Marrya. and Captain NaEae Red. the la-ter's books being popular also America British girls have not en- ioyed the beautiful stories Of Mrs. Al= cot. They have had more morbid and less cheerful literature to pernse. Their writers have been more numer- ous, but less optimistic and popular in the sense Of being held in close heart esteem.
 Miss Yonge. Mrs. Sherwood, Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Edgeworth have written for English girls, but their stories have not been at all times strictly juvenile. In this they diff fer distinctly from either Captain Mar ryat or Captain Reid. In recent number of the National Review Of London, it is stated that as recently as 1858 Captain Reid in the opening page to his volume The Boy Hunt CTS" made this dedication: For the boy readers of England and America this book has been written, and to them it is dedicated. That it may in- trest them, so as to rival in their af- factions the top, the ball and the kite; that it may impress them, so as to create a taste for that most re- lining study, the study of human na- t,1re: that it may benefit them by be- getting a fondness for books-the an- tidotes of idleness and vice-has been the design, as it is the sincere wish, of their friend, the Author.
 Neither Marryat nor Reid was afraid of the critics. and in the preface to Masterman Ready Marryat defies the critics in this line: T would take the opinion of the children on my work sooner than that of the critics. The women writers were more fearful and they made their early heroines so inl- possibly perfect that they were not human. The writer before quoted sums the characteristics of the ideal story book in this quatrain:
 Maria attentive grew,
 So thoughtful and polite,
 Her friends admired and loved her too,
 For all she did was right
 But it became evident that such an unblemished being was not of the earth. She was an ideality and was destined to die young, leaving lan- gushing friends of more worldly na- lures who enjoyed themselves in a way that gave Satan great glee. The pad American girl and boy has been depicted in song and story as arrlv- ing at the very nadir of sinfulneSS when he or she was caught stealing the maternal jam The British protO- type took marmalade and apple tarts. The principle was the same. From the delineation of the perfect girl and boy in English juvenile writings came a period when hideous morbidness was injected into most of the writings for the vOung One of the best Specl- mems is quoted from selection made by Eveline C. Cooley. In chapter by Mrs. Sherwood "On Death where the three children, aged respectively s, and ,, ask leave to go and see the dead body of "Old John, the garden er this appears: Should you like to 70 and see the corpse, my dears??' | led Mr. Fairchild. You never saw a corpse, believe?' No papa we should like to see one. 'I tell you before hand, my dear children, that death is very terrible. A corpse is an awful sight" q know, papa ans wered Lucy, but we should like to go.a The parent, rather edified than otherwise, consents. and further inn proves the occasion by adding: You, Lucy and Emily, come and take a turn with me on the grass plot be- fore dinner, and We will have little discourse on the subject of death Cheerful prospect that for the inno-
 cent little English children of half century ago And 1t is this same Lucy whose mother gives her little book neatly bound in red leather, ' with the words Here, my dear, take 1 this book and write in it every day
 the naughty things which pass in your l heart
 Thank heaven the days of that sort 1 of childish literature have gone and 1 today we have happier, healthier, more enjoyable and more useful books
 for boys and girls. There is just a ftrace of this gloomy sort of thing left in the srotesquely illustrated and srewsome editions of Dante's Infer no" that occupy the center table in lfew of our isolated homes. But the