MISS CROMPTON'S STORIES OF CHILDREN.* THE pleasure that grown-up people

take in children's stories is a latter-day product. In bygone times children had a literature of their own with which their elders had little to do.

Nowadays, childhood and maturity encroach on each other's domains. Boys and girls read Scott, Dickens, and Kingsley, and their parents and guardians enjoy Mrs. Ewing and Mrs.

Molesworth. The modern child's story shows as much art as work on a larger scale. Imagination and style are there as important factors. It is, however, in the things left out that part of the charm is hidden. The novel may bristle with the problems of religion, heredity, sex, or Socialism, but these must perforce be left behind in stories told to a child. Only the broad, simple facts of human nature can find there a fitting place.

It is not given to every one to see with a child's eyes after the years have brought the vision of wider horizons. Yet this memory of what once has been, this insight into what is still going on in the world of little people, is necessary for the writer of stories for children. Miss Crompton, the author of The Gentle Heritage and other delightful books, has this faculty in no small degree. She realises all the joys of " imagining things," and the difficulties that have to be gone through because grown-up people have lost the art or have 'never had it. Helen &rope, in The Gentle Heritage, says

that,—

I "The thing we think the worst of all about nurse, is that there could not possibly be any person in the world with less imagina- tion than she has. She never would see what pleasure we could find in sitting in a ring under the table and imagining things, which she called telling untruths."

But "imagining things" has its dark as well as its bright

side :—

"I do not know why we liked imagining about Bogy, for we were dreadfully afraid of him. I suppose there was a kind of excitement about it that was interesting; but now it does seem very foolish to have taken so much trouble to make ourselves miserable. But to imagine about Bogy was quite our favourite game then. We never could quite decide where he lived. I did hope that it was not really necessary for him to live with us at all ; but Patricia resigned herself from the first. There is such a person as Bogy in the house,' she said; 'for Mriar says there is. So he must be somewhere ; and the thing is, where is it ? ' Bobby thought he would prefer him to live in the cellars, because he felt the cellar-door corked him down pretty well ; but we could not trust to his staying there, because no one could be expected to live altogether in cellars. And so the Bogy in our house had a very unpleasant habit of lurking in corners all about the place, and after dark it grew very disagreeable,—very disagreeable indeed."

Bogy plays a large part in the lives of these little children who, with the curious reticence of childhood, never think of

telling their mother, and thus finding deliverance from their fears. At night he is the Mau-under-the-Bed; but later, they think they have found out his whereabouts, for a new neighbour has come to the next house, and his description seems to answer to that of the enemy. How they make acquaintance with Bogy, who wears a black shade and has only one arm, how he gradually becomes their dearest friend, how he helps them in their difficulties, adds to their joys, and gives the most fascinating tea-parties imaginable, can only be told by the author herself. Bogy is the owner of a charming

garden. When the children went over it, they came to the best part of it last :— '

"We went under an arch made by two great cedars of Lebanon, and found ourselves in another little garden shut in by the hedges. It was so silent that it might have been miles and miles away from anybody living ; there were only some wood-pigeons cooing in the trees. It never looked like a common garden, even before Bogy told what it meant ; it was so sunny and old and silent, and the air was very still and sweet. There were no walks, but it was all grass, and the beds lay round about in the grass, and there was a big old sundial in the middle of the garden. We sat on the steps of the sundial while Bogy told us what this garden was, as he said his godmother had explained it to him, when he was a little boy and she lived at the old house. It was full of plants dedicated to the saints, so that there was a flower for every saint to flower on the proper day. It was a place quite different from any other; it seemed to us from the first as if we ought to talk in low voices there, almost as if it were a church.

And my godmother used to tell see when I was a little boy,' Bogy said to us, that when this old house was a priory, as I was telling you just now, this garden was a small graveyard. I do not know whether it is true or not, but my godmother believed it, and would never let this place be disturbed. Its name is the Saints' Rest.'"

• blaster .13artleny. Friday's Child, The Gentle Heritage. 89 Fromm; E. Crompton. London ; hum and Co.

The Gentle Heritage is told in the first person. The child's point of view is wonderfully sustained. Hardly ever does one break through into that elder world that would destroy the illusion. It is a life bounded by home, with nurse as the stern lawgiver, whose dictates on clothes and manners are portentous on the occasion of parties, but whose jurisdic- tion barely reaches to that world of imagination and out-of- doors where the children spend so much of their time. Little Miss Nancy, whose story is told in Master Bartlemy, lives also under stern discipline. She herself is not quite of to-day, and in her secluded home the habits of past generations

linger on to form the training of the solitary child. The desire of her heart for weeks and months is an old house which goes by the mysterious and fascinating name of "The Thankful Heart." She has only seen it afar off through iron gates, across a field golden with buttercups, and craves for a closer knowledge. When at last after many disappointments her dream is realised, and she finds herself actually within the empty rooms of the house, which in years gone by was given unto God's poore for ever ; " the awakening is very hard to bear :—

"At eight years old, one's philosophy cannot bear a very heavy strain, and the eight of the sleepy courtyard brought back the poor, foolish, old dream so pitifully that Miss Nancy felt that she must either untie the strings of her bonnet or choke. Nothing seemed to care. The water rippled in the grey basin, and the pigeons fluttered round the dovecote and nestled in the yellow light, and the sheep bleated faintly on the uplands, and the larks sang high over the meadow. And so Miss Nancy suddenly and inex- plicably burst into bitter tears. What, Nancy,' said the astonished Rector, 'have you hurt yourself P Are you tired P What is the matter ?'—' I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it ! ' cried Miss Nancy. 'I had meant so hard to be good, but I cannot bear it

any more Bear what, my dear little maid ? ' said the Rector, much concerned.—' I loved it so much, and I wanted to come to it more than anything. Oh, I did, I did I '= And now you are disappointed in it F' said the Rector, after a pause.—' I don't know ! ' was all Miss Nancy could reply between her sobs.—' But I thought you understood that it was only an old house, Nancy F' I don't know. I didn't think it would be like that,' sobbed Miss Nancy. And there is nobody there at all, and yet it says over the door that it was given to God's poor—it says for ever.' —.Yes, my little maid,' said the Rector, slowly, 'It was given to God's poor for ever, to the poor of Forest Morton parish. But that is the sad part that I told you of. The endowment failed long ago; I mean, Nancy, that there is no longer any money with which to support the old house.'—' Then it is no use that the Thankful Heart was given, and it is all lost, and I am sorrier than ever?— ' And yet, I would say, not lost,' replied the Rector, pacing the courtyard, The spirit of the gift is more than the gift itself, my little maid, and that can never be lost, having passed once for all beyond us and our marring.'—' But what is it ? ' said Miss Nancy, trying to suspend her sobs.—' I mean the deep thought of the heart, with which the gift was given, Nancy?— ' I think I begin to know it,' said Miss Nancy, only I cannot say it. It means that nothing could ever take away that it was given once!—And the Rector bent his head and said, In token of the Thankful Heart, amen!—He sat down on one of the benches under the latticed windows, and Miss Nancy sat beside him and wiped her eyes, with a vague sense, however little understood, of a quiet consolation."

Then and there the Hector tells the story of Master Bartlemy the founder, of his love for this beautiful world, and his skill in showing forth that beauty in carvings of saint and apostle, of leaf, and fruit, and flower, and how through joy and sorrow alike he kept always the spirit of thanksgiving. When we part from little Miss Nancy, she herself is full of joy and thankfulness, for "Behold, God's poor were come to their own again, and sat on benches in the sunlight, and took their rest in the peace of 'The Thankful Heart."

The writer's gift for pathos is perhaps seen most strongly in Friday's Child, the little boy who proves the truth of the

old rhyme "Friday's child is full of woe "—by being so very unlucky—though, as the old housekeeper says, "there never

was a happier-natured child." We are told how he lived his brave little life, and through the Passage Perillus reached at last the Port Pleasant, but it would spoil the beauty of the story to attempt to tell it in any other form. In all these books we find the acknowledgement of our great heritage from the past. In Master Bartlemy we see the life of an artist and craftsman of the Middle Ages laying hold on the imagination of a little girl of our own time, and through her unconscious means still working for the welfare of the poor and neglected. In Friday's Child the passion for know- ledge and adventure, the courage and self-sacrifice of the old

explorers, of the men who risked their lives to widen the world, gives the little, delicate boy, who has lived on their chronicles, courage to meet failure and death itself. In The Gentle

Heritage the children learn that each is the heir of countless noble thoughts and gentle deeds. "There shall never be one lost good" might well be the keynote of the books, yet there is nothing forced or didactic ; the thoughts develop naturally from the story. Work like this, where dramatic insight and the charm of style are added to fine choice of subject, is specially welcome, and appeals alike to children and their elders.