With Crockett and Bowie. By Kirk Munroe. (Blackie and Son.)—This
is a stirring story of the struggle of Texas for in- dependence,—the struggle in which " pioneers " like Dave Crockett and James Bowie fell before the overwhelming force of the savage but not altogether incapable Santa Anna. Mr. Munroe has very skilfully adapted it to the judgment, and, which is a good deal more important, to the liking, of boys by making the heroes of it a spirited lad, Rex Harden, the son of Squire Harden, the owner of the Rancho Herrera in Texas, and his equally spirited horse 'Tawny,' which we find him trying, by a mixture of resolution and kindliness, to master in the first chapter. Rex and ` Tawny ' have wonderful adventures, Rex, in particular, being either condemned to death or left for dead some ten times in the course of the story. They are generally together, but when they are separated the horse does any amount of fighting and killing on his own account. Apart from such adventures, Mr. Munroe has constructed his plot with undoubted skill, and his descriptions of the combats between the Texans and the Mexicans—notably of the catastrophe and massacre of the Alamo and General Houston's effective revenge—are brilliantly "graphic." This is in every sense one of the best books for boys that have been produced during the present publishing season.
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