CURRENT LITERATURE.
A B C of Life. By A. B. Child, M.D., author of "Whatever is is Right." (Boston : White and Co.).—Dr. Child is a gentleman who, apparently desirous of aspiring to the proud position of the American Tupper, has embodied his views on things in general in 306 brief aphorisms, which, with a happy allusion to his own initials, he styles the "A B C of Life." These aphorisms are of various kinds, varying from the merely common-place to the entirely incomprehensible. "Virtue needs no trumpeter" is a statement which we may safely place in the former of these categories. "Drinking-houses are spiritual labora- tories, that work off the material glory from the soul," holds a kind of intermediate position, since it leaves us in a state of pleasing uncer- tainty as to whether the doctor approves of or condemns the establish- ments in question. But there can be no doubt about the place to be assigned to the following noble utterance, which is purely oracular both in form and substance :—" Life shows attraction, repulsion, motion, ex- pansion, growth, sensation, respiration, and pulsation ; then conscious identity, followed by the feud of joy and sorrow ; the warfare of good and evil,—good falls back and evil triumphs,—death CMOS, and all these sensuous evidences of life cease to testify. Then life comes forth from utero-gestation ; from the physical womb of this material world." It is no small proof of the doctor's foresight that he devotes about a dozen of his aphorisms to the expression of his dislike for and distrust of critics.
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