CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Miss Farjeon Looks Back to 1851
WEU, my dears! summer is over, with all the delights and excite- ments of the Great Exhibitifln, and I hope you were lucky enough to be taken there by jolly Uncle Jack or kind Aunt Harriet, to see the Crystal Fountain and the Mountain of Light Diamond, the Fighting Horses and the Lion in Love ; and the Great Carpet, worked in Berlin Wools by the Ladies of London, and, better still, the May- Day Industrial Jubilee Garland, 1,851 feet in length, composed of 1,851 varieties of artificial foliage, flowers and fruits ! Why 1851, do you ask ? Come, come, my dears ! take a peep at your calendars. - And now ! the Fountain of Glass is silent, the Mountain of Light Diamond has melted away, the Great Carpet is laid up in camphor, and the Great Wreath withered like the autumn leaves. It is all a little sad, is it not ? But dry your eyes, I have the best of news for you ! The parcel of Christmas Book's is just arrived—and only fancy ! there are three, yes, actually three of them this year !* If you can persuade Uncle Jack or Aunt Harriet to buy one for you, it will indeed be hard to pick and choose.
First tumbles out The Child's Companion for 1851; and on page No. One what should meet our eye but a picture of the Palace of Glass, with the flags flying, and the ham throngs strolling among the trees ! So, if you are lucky, you can refresh your memory again and again by studying the pictures, and applying yourself to the descriptions, of the erection, preparation, opening, and closing of the Great Exhibition, which the French call Exposition, and the Germans Gewerbeausstellung ! Besides this, The Child's Com- panion contains "Gleanings in Useful Knowledge," with which you can astonish Uncle Jack, when he begins asking you questions about Sat, Cork, Umbrellas, Dew and Asbestos ; and many little 'poems about the Sick and the Poor which you will enjoy learning by heart to recite to Aunt Harriet ; and numberless little dialogues which will entertain almost as much as they, will edify you. Listen to Maria and Louisa, wondering how to spend their pocket-money for New Year's Day: they have three whole shillings between them !
L.: Perhaps mamma will let us go out with her in the afternoon, and we can buy some things that will be pretty and useful, and keep then until New Year's Day, and then we can give them to the porter for his children. M.: And I should like to get something for the washerwoman's little girls. L.: We can do both. How pleased they will be. But do you think we may spend our money in this way ?
M.: To be sure ; it is pur own, and we may do as we like with it. - LI But it was given us by our friends, so that Are can scarcely call it our own. Perhaps they had rather we should keep it for . some other purpose.
M.: Very true ; but what can we do ? L.: I am thinking. You know bow to knit, and I can do other fancy-work. You might knit a warm comforter for papa, and I will work mamma a collar. I think they would buy these things of us.
Ingenious Louisa ! If their parents are not too surprized at being- asked to pay,..for their Christmas Gifts, these lucky children may end up even richer than they began ! As to the porter's little boys and the washerwoman's little girls, we must just hope for the best.
Now let us peep inside the bright green cover of The Boys' and Girls' Storybook. This too is a compendium of stories, verses and curious. anecdotes ; but the children in the verses are not quite so sick as in The Child's Companion, and the stories are perhaps a little livelier. However, I would be sorry if you thought this book will not do you a great deal of good too, or encourage your educa- tion. I should like you all to take to heart a particular item on this subject (and perhaps you had better take papa's dictionary too): Puasurr OF KNOWLEDGE.—He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness ; therefore we should cherish ardour in the pursuit of useful know- ledge ; and remember that a blighted spring makes a barren year, and that the vernal flowers, however beautiful and gay, are only
• intended by nature as preparatives to autumnal fruit.
After this, I am sure you will all enjoy the tale of "Laura Lee." Laura is as good as she is pretty, and she has a kind father and a shaggy dog called Pompey. But alas ! "a deadly disease fastened on her father's frame 1; he dies, and "they took her into the dark room, and turned back the damp death-cloth, and told her that was death." Pompey does his best to comfort her—" but they did not leave her alone. Poverty was added to her sorrow." (Ask me not who " They " are, my dears ; I would rather not know.) They find Laura a place with "a hard-faced milliner," who objects to Pompey, as he trudges about the streets with his little mistress "loaded down by. the weight of bundles." One night, when Laura is grown to a lovely girl, she wanders to the graveyard with Pompey, now threatened by the milliner with death ; and while she kneels beside her father's tomb, a hand falls on her head, a kind voice asks her name. "Laura Lee, and this is my father's grave ! " "Then you are my little niece ! " Yes ! It is James Lee's brother, returned from South Africa ; and though we had not heard of him before, let us remember, in our times of tribulation, that there is always a rich Uncle from South Africa in the background.
Then there is the curious anecdote of the wounded pike, which Dr. Warwick found "dashing itself madly against a stake" in the pond ; the doctor eased its fractured skull, made "a kind of pillow" for it to rest on—and next .day, when he visited his patient, "the pike came towards him to the edge of the water and actually laid it; head upon his foot." The fish was cured; and from that day forth came to the dqctor's whistle, and fed out of his hand.
We must hasten on. There is but one book left: The Dream Chintz by the author of A Trap to Catch a Sunbeam. The author is too modest. . She has no need to blush for this beautifully-told story of Walter, the village innocent who communes with fairies, is tenderly cared for by his sister Margaret,_and makes friends with Hugh Ripley, a poor young man "brought up to no profession, but with a great taste for drawing." One night, a prize for a pattern of chintz having been offered by an important firm, Hugh dreams the most exquisite pattern, as a reward from Walter's fairies for his befriending of their dear simpleton. How he wins the prize, comes to love Margaret, is parted from her by circumstances, and found again by Walter, fte walks to London led by a butterfly, is told to the accompaniment of the most charming drawings by James Godwin, engraved by Dalziel, Jackson, Hammond and Meason. They must all have their due in making so sweet a thing of this charming book, in its dream-cover of gold ivy-leaves on a pale pink ground. The story is pure fancy, unimproved by information ; yet (dare I confess it ?) I had an Uncle Jack or an Aunt Harriet, it is this one I would choose to find in my Christmas stocking.
ELEANOR FARJEON.
* The Child's Companion and Juvenile Instructor. (Religious Tract Society. is.) The Boys' and Girls' Storybook or Pleasing Companion for All Seasons. Illustrated with fine en_gravings. (Thomas Holmes, 76 St. Paul's Churchyard. ls.) The Dream Chintz. By the author of A Trap to Catch a. Sua beam. With illustrations. by James Godwin. (W. N. Wright, Booiseller to the queen. Is.)
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