The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-10
ON THE EDGE OF SCHOOL TIME

1 is hardly less lonely than in India Only she has allotted to serve her little red checked country maid, one who is fear less and sweet as Yorkshire gorse and ds much a good child of nature as is the purple heather of the moors.
 From this little child of the moors Mary receives the first gift that ever gave her any real pleasure, a skipping rope, that cost of the maids wages a hard earned but cheerily given "tup- pence"
 Although Mary is lonely there is much more to interest her in Missel- thwaite Manor than fin the Indian bungalow for in this manor many hun dreds of years old there are more than hundred rooms and most of them are fast locked and therefore full of mys- tery to the child left all day to her own devices. There is also a secret garden to which there can be found no door, an Ivy grown wall around and around and no door. What child could desire more delight than a search for the missing door, howbeit the key (to the door, if found) is buried-somewhere. And now the story will tell how a friendly robin pointed, In robin way, to where the key lay, and the same friendly robin, aided by stout Yorkshire breeze, showed the same little girl where the hidden door broke the stone wall-and oh the wonders that were to be done in that secret garden where for ten years the roses stayed wick" which Is York shire word for alive, wick and willing to aid three children in the great work of making joy live.
 There were long corridors, too, in the old manor where Mary in her wander ings heard distressfuL crying-wel! how Mary, lonely as she was and selfish as she had been, found a way to make those cries turn to happy laughter the story tells.
 h Mrs Burnett has always been par ex- lcellence the story teller-the story is the thing with her She trades not at all In epigram, she never has a line that one cares to take from the text for quotation, her books are all story, the old spirit of the fairy tale has come to life on the point of her pen. And this IS spirit that is ever welcome in our world for after all where is the quot able word in Beauty and the Beast ?' and who asks for an epigram in Jack the Giant Killer?" Such brilliants would but mar the flowing gold of the story. The story is the thing with Mrs Bur nett, and very entrancing tale is this latest one from her facile pen
 The Littlest Rebel" by Edward Pepls.
 Moffat, Yard X Co.,, New York. 75
 cents.
 With books like these the north be- gins after 50 years to learn the depth and the soreness of the cleft made in the heart of the south by the cruelties of war: cruelties that were, alas, so un- necessary so else unknown to civilized warfare; the burning, the sacking, the pillaging of the northern forces march . ing through a country so sparsely de- tended Now the north and the world begin to see the south as 1t was a dauntless, almost starving army of the flower of the land massed in a few spots to repel and attack overwhelmins. forces, while the whole land through which great, well fed. finely accoutered armies of invasion marched were peo- pied only by old old men and boys all most too young and small to bear even squirrel rife, for 1t Is well known that from every section of the south cradle brigades." composed of boys of | 16 and under went to the front The old sad story, the old glorious story all of it will never be told. very beautiful little bit of the old tale is told In these pages of Edward Peple's. Every little girl who reads the story will want to keep little rebel Virgie Cary, forever on her own pet book shelf,
 II is the story of deeds that outran nIS in righteousness even the performa nee of duty; of a lie that is more glorious than the truth, of treachery that is