At Home and Abroad. Stories from The Pansy Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Price, $1.00. A score of short stories which originally appeared in the delightful magazine, The Pansy, have been here brought together in collected form with the illustrations which originally accompanied them. They are from the pens of various authors, and are bright, instructive and entertaining.
About Giants. By Isabel Smithson. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Price 60 cents. In this little volume Miss Smithson has gathered together many curious and interesting facts relating to real giants, or people who have grown to an extraordinary size. She does not believe that there was ever a race of giants, but that those who are so-called are exceptional cases, due to some freak of nature. Among those described are Cutter, the Irish giant, who was eight feet tall, Tony Payne, whose height exceeded seven feet, and Chang, the Chinese giant, who was on exhibition in this country a few years ago. The volume contains not only accounts of giants, but also of dwarfs, and is illustrated.
American Authors. By Amanda B. Harris. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Price $1.00. This is one of the books we can heartily commend to young readers, not only for its interest, but for the information it contains. All lovers of books have a natural curiosity to know something about their writers, and the better the books, the keener the curiosity. Miss Harris has written the various chapters of the volume with a full appreciation of this fact. She tells us about the earlier group of American writers, Irving, Cooper, Prescott, Emerson, and Hawthorne, all of whom are gone, and also of some of those who came later, among them the Cary sisters, Thoreau, Lowell, Helen Hunt, Donald G. Mitchell and others. Miss Harris has a happy way of imparting information, and the boys and girls into whose hands this little book may fall will find it pleasant reading.
Tilting at Windmills: A Story of the Blue Grass Country. By Emma M. Connelly. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. 12mo, $1.50.
Not since the days of "A Fool's Errand" has so strong and so characteristic a "border novel" been brought to the attention of the public as is now presented by Miss Connelly in this book which she so aptly terms "Tilting at Windmills." Indeed, it is questionable whether Judge Tourgee's famous book touched so deftly and yet so practically the real phases of the reconstruction period and the interminable antagonisms of race and section.
The self-sufficient Boston man, a capital fellow at heart, but tinged with the traditions and environments of his Puritan ancestry and conditions, coming into his strange heritage in Kentucky at the close of the civil war, seeks to change by instant manipulation all the equally strong and deep-rooted traditions and environments of Blue Grass society.
His ruthless conscience will allow of no compromise, and the people whom he seeks to proselyte alike misunderstand his motives and spurn his proffered assistance.
Presumed errors are materialized and partial evils are magnified. Allerton tilts at windmills and with the customary Quixotic results. He is, seemingly, unhorsed in every encounter.