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attractive. All these stories were related to the guests at the marriage feast of King Herla, which naturally lasted for several days. The device will be recognized by exceptionally clever persons as not unlike formerly known methods of setting forth tales, but it is handled with uncommon cleverness and effect, the vehicle of the stories being itself one of the most interesting of them. The author is engagingly innocent in his wonder at the fact, which will not down, that some of the stories have been printed before. The humor of it becomes plainer as we go through the book and find such old friends as "The Golden Bird," "Cinderella," "The Briar Rose," "The Argonauts," "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "King Lear." There is one overgrown child who, if he ever finds time, is going to read this book clear through again, just for fun, and he knows not what more he can say for it than that.

As not all Yarmouth bloaters come from Yarmouth, even so not all fairy stories have fairies in them. Many of the very best of them have none. "Fairy tale" is only the designation of a story fired by a certain. quality of imagination, and the entrance of a fairy into it or his failure to enter is a mere detail. Dreamland lies so near to Fairyland that the boundaries have never been satisfactorily settled. It would not be fair to "The Dream Fox Story Book," by Mabel Osgood Wright (Macmillans), to say that it an imitation of Through the Looking

was

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Glass." It is too good to rest under a charge so liable to misinterpretation. will be better to say that it was inspired by "Through the Looking-Glass." The transmutations and the passing through page after page of the book certainly recall the changes of Alice's entertaining friends and the crossing of the little brooks, but the book has its own sort of originality, and the pictures which Oliver Herford has made for it are inspired by nothing but the artist's own clever brain. They are thoroughly delightful.

The charge that "The Road to Nowhere," by Livingston B. Morse (Harpers),

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From "The Dream Fox Fairy Book, "-Copyright, 1900, by The Macmillan

Co.

THE DREAM FOX AND THE NIGHT MARE

From The Irish Brigade."

(Century Co.), but such frankness does not impair the effect of the book as a clever and gratifying one. The pictures, by Fanny Y. Cory, are particularly good, and there are too many of them to count. "The Little Dreamer's Adventure," by Frank Samuel Child (Lee & Shepard), is full of a sort of jocularity that keeps one puzzled whether to think it silly or clever, but one is likely to end by being amused. There are puns and puns, and many of them would be counted pretty poor ones if they were isolated, but, as they are, their quantity diverts attention from their quality and it is interesting to see how often the author can make even bad puns. In real life such children as those of the book ought to be packed off to separate schools, as far apart as possible, in the hope that they might come out like other children. In a book they are at times diverting. In each of the "Stories from Dreamland" a child dreams a dream, and some of them are most unpleasant dreams. The book has a pretty red and gold cover and is written by William H. Pott and published by James Pott & Co. There are some singularly wooden-colored pic

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Copyright, 1900, by Charles Scribner's Sons. "TAKING A DIAMOND RING FROM HIS FINGER, HE HANDED IT TO DESMOND

is an imitation, is forestalled by the dedication of the book "to Alice in Wonderland." As far as it is an imitation, it is a good one, and its story is attractive, interesting and amusing. It has pictures in red and black, cleverly drawn by Edna. Morse. Official acknowledgment of a likeness to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is also made on behalf of "Josey and the Chipmunk," by Sydney Reid

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"The Second Froggy Fairy Book," by Anthony J. Drexel Biddel, published by Drexel Biddel, is just what its name im

plies. That is exactly the kind of book caped, and were at the relief of Ladythat it is.

All the peace societies in the world will have their hands full for a considerable time to cure boys of their fondness for war stories. There was never any sign of its dying out, but just now it is stimulated by the martial activity of the Anglo-Saxon race. G. A. Henty offers three books about three wars this year, all issued by Charles Scribner's Sons. Nobody can deny that Mr. Henty is a prolific writer, but one can really get through a good deal of writing if one gives one's whole mind to it. It is likely that many a reviewer who cracks his little jokes on the bulk of Mr. Henty's production writes three times as much himself. In introducing "With Buller in Natal," the author admits that the time for writing the whole story of the war impartially is not yet, but he serves notice on his readers that he means to deal with the main army next year. In this book he tells of the adventures of some boys who fought against the Boers. It is pretty severely pro-British, but it is a story and not a history, and a story must take sides. Everybody is for the King while reading "Woodstock." The boys in this story saw the most of the fighting of Buller's army, were taken prisoners and es

smith.

It is not because he has exhausted the resources of the wars of old that Mr. Henty has taken up the stories of the wars of to-day. His former sources have not failed him. "In the Irish Brigade" tells of the adventures of a young Irish officer in the wars of Flanders and Spain,

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Lothrop Publishing Co.

From " The Noank's Log." "NOW, LUKE WATTS! THEY'LL HANG YE YET,' SAID CAPTAIN AVERY"

From "The Fifer Boy of the Burton Siege."

FAITH IN CHRIST CHURCH

when young men of his country were obliged to go abroad to find a king to whom they could give their swords. It has all the stir of those swashbuckling times and the movement of Mr. Henty's own style of story-telling. There is something more than story in these books too, for many a vivid bit of history stands out in their pages. Most vivid pictures of history come from stories and plays, and not from mere chronicles. Have not thousands of intelligent persons gained

their best impressions of English history from Shakespeare? And so there are more historical lights to be found in "Out with Garibaldi," in which Mr. Henty tells of the invasion of the Sicilies, a chapter whereof the bare recital of the facts reads like a romance. As usual the hero is a boy of sixteen, and, as usual, he passes through many dangers and triumphs and is left merry and happy at the end of the book. Mr. Henty has seldom had better material to work with than in this book and he has seldom used it to better purpose.

Edward Stratemeyer, in "Between Boer and Briton" (Lee & Shepard), has had no such compunctions as Mr. Henty about treating of the whole war. The book covers the time from the beginning of the war to the fall of Pretoria and a considerable time before the war, and relates other than military adventures of its two leading characters, an American and an English boy. The war is rather the background of the story than its central feature.

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A. I. Bradley & Co.

If there was any special daring in Mr. Stratemeyer's attempt to cover the whole field of the Boer War in one story, there is yet more in Elbridge S. Brooks's "With Lawton and Roberts" (Lothrop Publishing Co.), for in this the effort is boldly made to cover both the Boer and the

Philippine wars.

The hero of this story, an American boy, and his English friend hasten through adventures in the Philippines and then hurry away to South Africa for more of them, and of course they do not fail to find an abundance. The book may form the connecting link between the year's stories of the two wars.

This connecting link being passed, the Philippine struggle comes into unobstructed view in "Aguinaldo's Hostage," by H. Irving Hancock (Lee & Shepard). The story is typical of its class. The boy hero being in the Philippines, incurs the displeasure of the villain by refusing to be dishonest, is the victim of a plot whereby he is held in captivity by the Filipinos, discovers and frustrates a scheme against the Americans, and receives the congratulations of the General. The hero of a story of this class is

almost always made a prisoner sooner or later, and so, going back from the latest war of the United States to the earliest, we find this to be the case in two books by Everett T. Tomlinson, "In the Hands of the Redcoats" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), and "A Prisoner in Buff" (American Baptist Publishing Co.). Both of these deal with the days of the American Revolution. The scene of the former is chiefly in New Jersey, and the imprisonment is on board the prison ship Jersey, while the latter is a story of days immediately following the battle of Long Island, with New York as the scene of captivity.

There is a bit of variety in the way of a love story in "The Fifer-Boy of the Boston Siege," by Edward A. Rand, published by A. I. Bradley. There is the war element too, plenty of it, but it is rather

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