A BOOK ABOUT ROSES.—How to Grow and Show Them! By S. Reynolds Hole, in one volume. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth, 90 cts.
“There is a June fragrance about this little book that is particularly refreshing, now that we are on the edge—very ragged edge, to be sure—of summer. They say the flowers know those who love them, and come forth only at their bidding. If this be so, surely Mr. Hole should be a successful cultivator, as he is certainly an entertaining writer on a subject in which he has long been a recognized authority. This is the seventh edition of his ‘Book About Roses’ that has been called for, and in responding to the demand the happy author contributes some of the latest results of his experience, which will be gratefully received by all rosarians. Mr. Hole is an enthusiast, and he communicates much of that quality to his pages. It is impossible to read long in this charming volume without becoming impressed with a profound conviction that a rose is the most perfect thing in creation. Aside from its value as a guide to cultivators, whether professional or amateur, the work possesses a rare fascination, that partly belongs to the subject and partly to its happy manner of treatment. There is a vein of playful humor in Mr. Hole’s writing that rarely degenerates into flippancy, and occasionally a little flight of sentimentalism that accords well with his theme, mingling agreeably enough with the purely scientific disquisitions like a wholesome perfume, which is happily not a hot-house, but an out-of-door one. We cordially commend this book to all who are interested in the cultivation of the queen of flowers.”—Chicago Evening Journal.
“The whole volume teems with encouraging data and statistics; and, while it is intensely practical, it will interest general readers by an unfailing vivacity, which supplies garnish and ornament to the array of facts, and furnishes ‘ana’ in such rich profusion that one might do worse than lay by many of Mr. Hole’s good stories for future table-talk.”—Saturday Review.
“It is the production of a man who boasts of thirty ‘all England’ cups, whose Roses are always looked for anxiously at flower-shows, who took the lion’s share in originating the first Rose-Show pur et simple, whose assistance as judge or amicus curiae is always courted at such exhibitions. Such a man ‘ought to have something to say worth hearing to those who love the Rose,’ and he has said it.”—Gardeners’ Chronicle.
“A very captivating book, containing a great deal of valuable information about the Rose and its culture, given in a style which can not fail to please.”—Journal of Horticulture.
William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York.
A TRAGEDY AT CONSTANTINOPLE.—By Leila-Hanoum, translated from the French, with notes, by Gen. R. E. Colston, one vol. pa., 50 cts. Clo., 90 cts.
“The romance has for its groundwork the mysterious and fascinating subject of harem life in the East, and is founded on facts. The tragedy is one no less thrilling in culmination than the violent ending of the Sultan Abdul-Aziz, which startled the world only a few years ago. The author works her way to this climax by a narrative almost as strange as a chapter out of the Arabian Nights. Incidentally it falls to her lot to reveal the secrets of the harems so jealously guarded from observation. She seems to have enjoyed inside views of those shrouded places to an extent rare if not unprecedented among persons not actually inmates of them. At all events no work surpasses this in its disclosures of the deep shadows of that female slavery which remains the foulest blot upon the domestic institutions of Turkey. The Empress Eugénie, Midhat-Pasha, Reshid-Pasha, Hassan-Bey, and other personages of rank and power in their day, are among the characters who play their part in this extraordinary book. General R. E. Colston, long identified with the Egyptian Army, is the translator, and supplies a preface so good that it should not be skipped.”—The Journal of Commerce, New York.