25 MAY 1872, Page 19

When I was Young. By Charles Camden. (Strahan.)—A capital book

of sketches, short tales, (tc., by an author who knows how to write for boys. "Mooching," a local word for "playing truant," is particularly admirable, though we are inclined, in the interests of order, to protest against the lenity with which this very heinous offence is spoken of. Capital, too, is the story of how the hero with his young friends dragged up a great log from the beach, by way of a present to a favourite shopkeeper in the village who had a pleasant way of giving away her sweetmeats to the children. And how pathetic is the ending, when the seafaring husband comes home !— " Wanting to take his wife by surprise, he had not looked in at the Bull, or any cottage he had passed, he had met no one that he knew upon the road ; and so the first thing he said, after he had hugged his wife was, 'Where are the young uns, Patty,—abed ? Wake 'em up. I've got some presents for 'em in my pockets.'" The "young uns "were "abed "in the churchyard, all drowned together.