NEW BOOKS. (Published by D. Lothrop Company.)
Reading edition
True Manliness. By Thomas Hughes. Price $1. I want to say a word about this book to a certain dear little girl I know who has a whole dollar with which to buy papa’s Christmas present, and who cannot decide what to buy. She knows papa likes books better than almost anything else, but then, how should a young girl know what book to select for a man who has gray hair?
My darling, I feel sure papa would like this very book. It is the reason I selected it from a large number of others, to tell the Pansies about, because I thought of you and your dollar. A very pretty book in a deep maroon binding, with three hundred pages of reading matter, and all of it put in paragraphs so that a busy man, who has but a few minutes to read, can seize this volume, get some sweet and helpful thoughts from it, during the five minutes when he is waiting for the mail, or for the street-car, and then go on his busy way. Just the thing for your hurried papa, don’t you see? In fact the book belongs to a set, named “The Spare Minute Series,” gotten up for just such waitings as I have described.
“Would the book be ‘nice’ for you to read?”
Well, no, little girlie, I’m inclined to think it would be rather “grown-up” for you, because, you see, it was written to help your grown-up papa and mamma. There are bits in it that you would like; and your fifteen-year-old brother would often read words in it that would please and help him. I open the book at random, and find these words under the heading of “Courage.”
“After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.
“Every one who is worth his salt, has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians.”
Don’t you know your brother said, only a few days ago when he got cross and things went wrong, that he felt as though he should like to fight somebody?
Here is his chance, with directions how to carry out his wish.
A Chautauqua Idyl. By Grace Livingston. Price 75 cents. The queerest little Chautauqua story you ever read! All about a new Chautauqua which is to be; one in which the birds and the flowers, and the fishes, and the squirrels, and all that lovely out-door life at which we look on, are deeply interested, as indeed they may be, for they are the prime movers. You couldn’t guess who leads the music, nor, for the matter of that, who gives lessons in Theology! A book full of lovely summer secrets, just right for the little people to read during the winter evenings.
Pictures? I should think so! Lovely ones; almost every page in the book is illustrated. Some of your little brothers ought to send for copies for Christmas presents for the sisters, or cousins, who always expect books from you.
Would it do, I wonder, to tell you a secret?
I mean you boys and girls who have read, and who love, “Grandpa’s Darlings?”
The truth is, this Grace Livingston is the very little “Gracie,” Grandpa’s own darling, who has grown up to be a young woman, and the first day she had a chance, she wrote this book, all about a queer, sweet, new Chautauqua; just to pay her “Auntie Belle,” for telling all sorts of funny things about her when she was Grandpa’s Darling.
Scripture Birthday Book. Price, $1.00. I thought I was tired of Autograph Albums, but this pretty little book bound in green and gold, containing a carefully-selected Bible-verse, and a verse of a hymn, for each day in the year, with a blank space for friends to write their names, gives me a great deal of pleasure. I think I should like to write in such a book as this. I’m sure I should like to give each of my young friends a Christmas present of a copy; and I would ask them to please learn the verse for each day. The one for the first day of the New Year is: “Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving, for consider how great things he hath done for you.”
He giveth snow like wool: He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes.—Psalm cxlvii. 16. FROM THE “SCRIPTURE BIRTHDAY BOOK.”
And the accompanying verse is:
“Man’s life’s a book of history; The leaves thereof, are days; The letters, mercies closely joined; The title is, Thy praise.”
Ah! there are pictures in it, too; one for each month. The first one shows us such a lovely snowy world, that I will have it copied for you to see.