CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
In the Far Country. By Albert E. Hooper. (James Clarke and Co.)—We confess to liking the real as distinguished from the " fairyland " portion of this book, and we should not be surprised if the " children " for whom it is ostensibly written were of the same opinion. Ralph Vernon is a good example of the headstrong and selfish boy who thinks of no pleasure but his own, but whe is, nevertheless, amenable to advice up to the point where he breaks his leg and escapes through the gate of illness and delirium into the "far country," where he falls in with the dwarf Mentor and has ad- ventures—of a sort. After this, the pill of edification is scarcely concealed by the jam of "fairy" fiction. At the same time, Mr. Hooper's style is careful ; his fairyland is a decidedly novel one ; and the lessons he teaches, and which ara concerned chiefly with the discipline of children, are of the soundest.
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