Most Interesting.
Most young women nowadays like to be here, there, and everywhere, and so you will find them in the Fifty-two Stories of Girl-life, by some of our best women writers, and edited by Alfred H. Miles. Messrs. Hutchinson who, publish this work, might head their advertisement with "Go for Miles—and you won't find anything better than this." Other jokes on "miles" they may discover or invent for themselves. These are mostly for our big girls, but the little ones will find a gorgeously gay Rosebud Annual for 1895, quite a prize-flower, exhibited by James Clark & Co.; whilst Rosy Mite; or, the Witch's Spell, by Vera Petrowna Jelibrovsky,—this is a nice easy name to ask for!—is a most thrilling nursery tale of how a little girl, who ought to be an arithmetician after being reduced to the size of her little finger, is able to subtract much adventurous interest from among the insects and the insect-world, and is full of undivided wonders. The illustrations, by T. Pym, show how charmingly unconventional life can be in such circumstances.
Aunï and Nephew
By Our Own Bird Fancier.
So charming, after long years of parting, to come again on Mr. Micawber! Of all things, he has been writing an account of The Life and Adventures of Thomas Edison (Chatto and Windus). The book purports to be the joint work of W. K. L. Dickson and Antonia Dickson. But that is only his modesty. The literary style is unmistakable. "Released from the swaddling clothes of error and superstition," no one but Mr. M. could have written, "the inherent virility of man has reasserted itself, and to the untrammelled vision and ripened energies of the scientist the arcana of nature have been gradually disclosed." "Edison's literary proclivities," he adds, in a sentence that recalls struggles in the house in Windsor Terrace, City Road, where David Copperfield was a lodger, "were seriously hampered by the collapse of the family fortunes, and the early necessity of gaining his own living. Despite his paucity of years, and the practical claims which life had already imposed, Edison devoted every spare moment to the improvement of his mind, and profited to the utmost by the wise and gentle tuition of his mother." My Baronite can almost hear Mr. Micawber's voice choked by a sob as he declaimed this last sentence. Fortunately (or unfortunately) Mr. Micawber does not last long. After the first chapter his hand is rarely seen, he probably, the God of Day gone down upon him, having been carried to the King's Bench prison. For the rest, the book is an admirable account of one of the most marvellous lives the world has known. Much of it is told in Edison's own words, conveying simple records of magic achievements. The book, luxuriously printed on thick glazed paper, is adorned by innumerable sketches and portraits, illustrating the life and work of the Wizard of the Nineteenth Century.
B. de B.-W.