What Katy Did, and What Katy Did at School, by
Susan Coblodge (the former published by Messrs. Warne, the latter by Messrs. Roberts, of Boston, U.S.), are two volumes which tell very prettily the story of a certain Katy. What she did " was to mount on a forbidden swing, and to get therefrom a fall which almost crippled her for life. From this, however, she recovers, and comes out vastly improved, in which condition we meet her in the second volume, where she is, so to speak, the good angel of the boarding-school to which she is sent. Both parts of the story are excellent, without any kind of false sentiment, full of graphic little sketches of family and school life, and, as occasion demands, genuinely humorous or pathetic. We cannot speak altogether so highly of a series of volumes, Elsie Dinsmore, Holidays at Roselands, and Elsie's Girlhood, by Martha Farquharson (Henry S. King & Co.), which also do scribe a young girl's life. Miss Farquharson writes with a strong bias to certain theological views, among which Sabbatarianism is prominent. One of the most harrowing scenes in the book is where Mr. Dinsmore commands his daughter to road a novel to him on the Sunday. She, being of quite tender years, refuses, and a terrible conflict of wills ensues, which nearly ends in the girl's death (the author goes so far as actually to have her "laid out"). Of course Elsie was right to hold to what she thought her duty to God, but her teaching had certainly been very narrow, and we must pronounce the subject unedifying. This burdening of the conscience about Sunday observances is, as all experience tolls us, most carefully to be avoided.
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