MOTHER GOOSE. BOOK NOTES. Dear Mother Goose! most motherly and dear I cuddle to thy bosom, with no fear The jolly jingles of mine infancy 4 We have received several attractive books for young people from the Lothrop Publishing Company. Among them is Phronsie Pepper, the last of the delightful Five Little Peppers series. The others are Tom Pickering, by Sophia Swett, an entertaining book for boys and girls of fourteen; His First Charge, by Faye Huntington, a temperance story, and Once Upon a Time, a dainty little book of child verses, by Miss Wilkins, whose work is too well known to need commendation. "Phronsie Pepper" is the last of the "Five Little Peppers,'' now grown famous in childhood-land, and we are forced to believe from the preface that the chronicle is, with this volume, forever closed. It has been a charming history, the story of "Mamsie" and "Polly," and "Ben, Joel, David and Phronsie," but regret that it is never again to be taken up is tempered by the possession of the three delightful "Pepper Books," of which the present is the last. The author frankly tells us in the preface that the whole thing is a fiction, the people who are so natural and nice, the "little Brown House, " and all the happy doings in "Badgertown;" but some of us may have a suspicion that Berton" is "Boston," and that perhaps "Badgertown" stands for Concord, Mass.; and there is a memory of the gracious authoress not as "Margaret Sidney," but as the wife of the Boston publisher through whose house the volumes have appeared. It was at a famous abode called "The Wayside," the second home of Hawthorne in Concord, that the original of "Margaret Sidney" dispensed her hospitality; and this added a deep interest to the books from her pen. It has remained a bookish centre in a village where many great memories of books reside. Not far away was the home of "Little Men" and "Little Women," almost of the same kin. "Phronsie Pepper" is as entertaining as its two predecessors, and not a single reader of them can afford to neglect its winning pages.-Book News. "MASTER SKYLARK." This is a story which young and old who are interested in the times of Shakespeare and good Queen Bess will heartily enjoy. William himself, Ben Jonson, Heywood, and others of their famous compeers are characters in it; and the scene is alternately at Stratford and in London. The hero is Nicholas Attwood, son of a Stratford tanner, a Puritan of rigid type, with a horror of all vain amusements, the stage in particular. A company of players came to town in April, 1596, as one did in 1569 when Shakespeare was five years old, and would probably have been allowed to give some performances if one of the players had not unluckily offended Sir Thomas Lucy, who therefore insisted that they should be refused a license to play, much to the disappointment of the good folk of Stratford, especially the youngsters. The players decide to go on to Coventry, and Master Nick and another lad determine to play truant and walk thither to see them act. The other boy, after a quarrel with his companion, turns back, and Nick trudges on alone. He soon falls in with the master-player, Gaston Carew, who got into the stocks as the result of the trouble with the magistrates, and is now on his way to overtake his fellows. He takes to the boy, and is the more interested in him when Nick, who has a wonderful voice, breaks out into song, mimicking a bird that trills hard by. "Well sung, well sung, Master Skylark!" he cries, and thus Nick gets his new name. It occurs to the player that the lad would be a prize to his company, and he resolves to carry him off to London and train him for the stage. He succeeds in this in spite of several desperate attempts of Nick to escape and return to his mother, who is not at all like her stern husband. Although Master Skylark is virtually a prisoner in Carew's house in London, he is treated well, and finds a sympathetic friend in the player's little daughter Cecily, who is as charming in her way as the young hero of the story. He, after brilliant musical success in the theatre, is called to sing before Elizabeth at the Christmas festivities. When she would fain give him some reward, he can only say, "Let me go home." This and the influence of Shakespeare, whom he meets soon after, leads to his eventually getting home, though not until Gaston Carew, who has stabbed a man in a brawl over the dice, has been sent to prison under sentence of death. Cecily, who is left an orphan and friendless, goes with him to Stratford, where, after being at first turned away from his father's door, they are befriended by Shakespeare, and all comes out happily at last. The author has evidently made a careful study of Elizabethan life, scenery and language; and the illustrations, by Mr. Reginald B. Birch, are in good keeping. The book indeed, has a positive educational value, aside from its interest as a story.-Critic. Mrs. W. S. Dana, the author of Plants and their Children and How to Know the Wild Flowers has adapted her knowledge of the plant world to the minds of the children in a series of simple lessons having all the charm of a story. -Bookman. "Diomed" is the autobiography of an English setter born in the Old Dominion, and hunting is the theme from beginning to end. . . . Certainly no one who ever had a love for the gun can fail to be entertained by Mr. Wise's delightful record, and they who have to do their hunting in their city homes will not fail to find a deal of amusement in his stories.--Public Opinion. -The name of Mrs. Oliver Thorne Miller at once suggests birds and bird lore. Her sympathetic studies of "the little brothers of the air" have won for them the interest and the protection of thousands who know birds only as the helpless feathered beings that cruelty and selfishness made their victims. By pen and voice Mrs. Miller has revealed the beauties and the intelligence of the feathered tribes of this country, winning friends for herself and the birds. As the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Cambridge, Mass., recently said, "I shall never think of you except as with the birds. All through these talks I have been unable to separate you from them. I have seen you in the woods, in the meadows, in the fields, always sur rounded by the birds you love so well, and who must love you in return." Mrs. Miller began her study of birds in captivity, but for years she has followed the birds to their haunts, made herself a part of the woods they loved by trimming her hats with the leaves of the trees about her. In leafy attire and by perfect quiet she has been able to sit in closest proximity to the nest and its dwellers, seeing their every movement. The country is indebted to Mrs. Miller for her devotion to the cause of her little friends, and for the awakened interest that means a broadened interest in life and an enrichment of its pleasures.-Outlook. For some reason or other, people like "Robinson Crusoe' as well now as they did in the year 1719, when it was published in London. No such permanent favor has ever been won by any other book printed in the English lan. guage. When we were all boys, my best adviser, himself a boy, said: "I like Robinson Crusoe because he doesn't succeed in everything. It is not like most children's books, where the good boy makes everything come out right." For instance, Robinson Crusoe cannot make ink. It is long before he succeeds well in his pipkins or pottery. Possibly here is a hint taken from DeFoe's own manufacture of drain-pipes and tiles. It is interesting, by the way, to know that when, a few years ago, the site of his old factory was dug over and some broken tobaccopipes found, which may have been made there, the English laborers engaged were greatly delighted. They knew Robinson Crusoe as well as the boy does who reads this article. Another blunder of Robinson Crusoe is his building his boat where he could not possibly launch it. How many of us in our own way have done something just like that! Lord Salisbury may find that boat next month if he sends out an officer who shall discover again this "uninhabited island at the mouth of the great river Oroonoque.”—E. E. Hale. One of the most marked features of the current literary movement is the unusually large number of volumes of short stories. Among these, two collections by Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart make appeal for first attention. Both are composed of studies of the Arkansas environment, and of the wider, mellower world spread on the opposite side of the Father of Waters, which the author has made her milieu, and of which she writes with such exquisite tenderness and delicious humour. The sketches collected under the title Sonny made the reader laugh with a swelling heart when they appeared in the Century, and the effect of the whole is still stronger in book-form. The story of the life of an Arkansas boy, from his birth to his marriage, is told in the quaint language of his farmer father, yet it strikes the note of the universal. In Solomon Crow's Christmas there is no connecting link binding the stories together as in the smaller volumes, and several of the sketches, as in the case of "Little Mother Quackalina," are of a juvenile character. the atmosphere is the same that has always enveloped Mrs. Stuart's work, and there is the same pervading sweetness of spirit and the same delicate humour always wavering on the narrow border between laughter and tears.-Book man. But Miss White's recent book, "A Little Girl of Long Ago," I think is an ideal child's book, so dainty and bright, with its sweet, old-time flavor. It is one of the books that the grownups like as well as the children; it carries some of the grandmothers back to the happy days when they were little girls, sixty years ago. What a delight a dear, cosey grandmother is! Her "Once upon a time" and "When I was a little girl" are the signals for a general gathering about her to listen to one of her stories. It is one of the happy things in the child's story world that some of our best writers have told tales of those far-off times, and that the pretty, quaint stories have found favor with the boys and girls; so we see them giving a loving welcome to Miss White's "When Molly was Six" and "A Little Girl of Long Ago."-Christian Register. When two writers of marked ability in both literature and natural history unite to produce a work giving scope to their special talents, the public has reason to expect a masterpiece of its kind. In the "Citizen Bird" (Macmillan), by Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright and Dr. Elliott Coues, this expectation is realized. Seldom is the plan of a book so admirably conceived and in every detail so excellently fulfilled. The volume is designed to win young people to a love of the birds, and presents its matter in the form of a story, which from beginning to end never falters in interest. One knows not whether most to applaud the ingenuity manifest in the varied scenes, the wit that enlivens them all, or the enticing manner in which information of a solid character is inserted in the narrative. Over a hundred 'birds are introduced, and their portraits are given in black and white by Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes, a young artist whose original and striking transcripts of bird-life are exciting mingled wonder and delight among ornithologists.-Dial. Among recent gifts to the Library are a half dozen attractive little books published by D. C. Heath & Co. Spears' "Leaves and Flowers" deals first with the former then with the latter, unfolding each subject in a simple systematic way. Common leaves and flowers have been chosen and the author strongly urges that the children see and handle the specimens, as without this all nature-study yields little fruit. The illustrations are good and a few pretty nature poems are given. This book would not be satisfactory as a supplementary reader, but is a good guide for the teacher. Miss Bass, in her "Vegetable and Animal Life," has been particularly successful, far beyond the average writer of nature-books. She has humanized her material, often introducing the plants and animals as personages and allowing them to tell their own story. This certainly appeals to all children, and such books will be read with pleasure as well as profit. In Miller's "My Saturday Bird Class" the study of familiar birds is taken up in a practical way, the pictures are good, the salient characteristics are well brought out and-best of all-strong sympathy for and interest in bird-life are created. The boys are urged not to kill the little feathery friends, nor destroy their eggs, and the girls are cautioned against wearing birds' wings or, worse still, whole birds on their hats. Kupfer's "Stories of Long Ago" and Firth's "Stories of Old Greece" are attractively gotten up. Very good reproductions of fine statues and pictures and well-chosen standard poems accompany the myths; but unfortunately the text of the latter is lacking in literary merit and the poetic quality so necessary to these myths. The attempt so often made of late to bring within the vocabulary of children famous stories and beautiful poems is a mistake. This will never create and foster a taste for good reading. The problem of providing suitable literature for young readers has been more nearly solved by Charles Eliot Norton in his Heart of Oak books. He has made selections from the masterpieces of the literature of the English-speaking race. He begins in his first book with the nursery rhymes and jingles, then passes on to the old fables, fairy tales, legends which have been told since the world was young. He lays great stress on the learning by heart of poetry, saying that poetry is one of the most efficient means of education of the moral sentiment, as well as of the intelligence. He concludes by saying: "The youth who shall become acqnainted with the contents of these volumes will share in the common stock of the intellectual life of the race to which he belongs." Every one will be interested in looking through these books and reading the able preface. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES. The men of science have begun to attack the cradle. For some time the nursery and the play-room have been subject to their attentions, and now the very citadel of babyhood is to be stormed. First came the folk-lorists, ' and laid their sacrilegious hands upon "Puss-in-Boots" and the "Sleeping the "Sleeping Beauty", showing that these stories contained we know not what marvelous indications as to the origin of mankind and the universality of particular beliefs. The next positions assaulted by science were the nursery-rhymes and the games such as "Here we go round the Mulberry Bush" and "Oranges and Lemons." Some of the jingles used by children were shown to have deep political and moral meanings; others, like the counting-out games, were exposed as the remains of dark and deadly incantations. "The cow that jumped over the Moon" is, we believe, asserted to be a piece of gnosticism. "Ten Little Nigger boys" is a charm, probably against rheumatics. "Hickery Dickery Dock," though it sounds like nonsense, is composed in gipsy language, -a Romany lyric. But these were mere affairs of outposts. Mr. Buckman in the May number of the Nineteenth Century, has had the hardihood to march up to the very edge of the cradle and to allege that when our child's first accents break they are not delicious nonsense, sweet babblings of the tiny human brook, but a highly organized system of infantile Volapuk. Mr. Buckman in all seriousness parades before the reader's astonished eyes the essential words of the baby's vocabulary. "Ma," he tells us, is an urgent cry of attention. So we have ourselves gathered. "Ma," indeed, is so universal a word that even the lambs use it. "The lamb, greatly excited to make itself heard, says 'Ma,' while the mother (sheep), not moved by such strong feelings, answers 'ba'!'' What the human mother answers when "not moved by such strong feelings" as her infant, we are not told by Mr. Buck man. Literary gentlemen on the lookout for new colors for the verbal palette may get some startling effects out of the baby. Meanwhile, we advise the men of science to be careful how they build their theories on the “mas,” "bas," and "das" of knee-high infants. We have a strong belief ourselves that baby language is a purely artificial product of the nurses and mothers, -a tradition handed down by them, and not by the babies. If this is so, the nurses and mothers could change it if they would, and nothing is more likely than that they would do so if they saw the prattle of the cradle set forth in printed books. The nurses would only have to put their heads together to make "tatta" mean "good morning" everywhere from Chicago to Aberdeen. — Spectator. PROSE AND POETRY FOR CHRISTMAS. See also Poole's Index to periodical literature, Fletcher's Annual literary index, the Cumulative index and the indexes of St. Nicholas and Harper's young people. MISCELLANY. Allen, G. Holly and mistletoe. (In his 75b able tales.) Ford, J. L. mas. 69b The bunco-steerer's ChristThe stock-broker's Christmas The curiosities' Christmas. (In his Hypnotic tales.) 69b Common sense science.) Beecher, H. W. A Christmas greeting. (In his Star papers.) McAnally Coll. 75a Christmas entertainments. 96 A reprint of a book published in 1740. Gives an account of Christmas in former times. Field, K. Christmas carol. (In her Pen photographs of Chas. Dickens's readings.) 75a Gannett, W. C. Christmas poem and the Christmas fact. (Pamphlets. v.611.) Ref. 11d Harryman, A. H. Through the loopholes. (In Soper, H. M., ed. Scrap-book recitation ser. no. 3.) 73c Hervey, T. K. The book of Christ mas. 96 gift. Some passengers in a Pullman car are snowed up on the road to Council Bluffs on Christmas eve, and spend Christmas playing games. Harris, J. C. A conscript's Christmas. (In his Balaam and his master.) 69b Harte, F. B. How Santa Claus came to Simpson's bar. The Christmas gift that came to Rupert. (In his Mrs. Skaggs's husbands.) 69b Hawthorne, N. The Christmas banquet. (In his Mosses from an old manse.) 69b Heimburg, W., pseud. Christmas stories. 69b Ogden, A., tr. and coll. Christmas stories; fr. Fr. and Span. writers. 69b Page, T. N. How the Captain made Christmas. (In his Burial of the guns.) Stowe, Mrs. H. E. (B.) The first Christmas of New England. (In her Betty's bright idea.) Thackeray, W. M. Christmas books. 69b 3.) 72c Wallace, L. First Christmas. (In Soper, H. M., ed. Scrap-book recitation ser. no. 73c -Christmas stories. Farjeon, B. L. Christmas angel. Field, E. First Christmas tree. 69b -Same. (In his Ben Hur.) Wilkins, M. E. Christmas Jenny. 69b 69b Stolen Christmas. (In her New England Com |