Peeps at Many Lands China. By Lena E. Johnston. (A.
and C, Black. is. 6d.)—This is a delightful book, quite worthy of the excellent series to which it belongs. If it is true that the waking of China "will be like the waking of Gulliver in Lillipat," it is as well to know something about the people and their ways. But all readers of the book need not look so far ; for them it will be of sufficient interest to hear something new about men and women, boys and girls, in this far-off land. They will be told about the language, and be thankful that they are not likely to have to learn it. Never was a language so full of pitfalls. Toh is Chinese for "table," but when you try to say it you will probably say some- thing different, as if you wanted a "knife," a "fish," a. "peach." It is easy to see how a single-syllabled language lends itself to these mistakes. From the language we go on to the people who speak it ; among them to the children, to their ways, to what they do at home, and to what they learn at school, the last being, it would seem, but very little in most eases. There are many interesting things in the book; one we cannot refrain from quoting. What presence of mind it showed in the Chinese boy that, being carried off by a tiger, he contrived to scoop up mud from the ground, plastered it over the creature's eyes, and so escaped!
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