CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Bose and Thorn. By Katharine Lee Bates. (Nelson.)—This is described by its author as " a book for boys ;" and the only fault that can be found with it is that it is almost too good, in the sense of conveying too profound a moral. A sister who is good-looking and who has been tenderly brought up, and a brother who is a hunchback, and has been so hardly treated that he describes him- self as "an accident from the beginning," act and re-act upon each other and on those by whom they are surrounded. Thorn, who has a brain and a heart, which are both of the best quality, gets rid of a certain morbidness of mind which comes of his physical condition by rubbing shoulders with the world, and especially with an athletic lad of the name of Phil, who, for an American boy, talks a wonderful amount of English public-school slang about " grit," " grind," "the governor," and the like. It is needless to say that Thorn, the hunchback, having conquered him- self, conquers everybody else, including his own uncle, whose son's life he virtually saves. The author of this book introduces us in it to a delightful company of young American cousins, and some agreeable old ones as well, such as Mother Killem and the choleric doctor. That, on the whole, there is more richness and variety in the American than in the English middle class, is one of the secondary conclusions that it seems impossible not to draw from Rose and Thorn.
Previous page
