This book contains not only good examples of the practical working of kindness and love, but points out the manner in which the parents make many blunders in the management of young and boisterous children. Some regard their mechanical toys as causes of trouble, and wish their children would play outside, "and keep their noise, dust, and confusion out of sight and hearing of their seniors." Experience among families where such is the fact has taught the author to depict with truth the results:
"These parents who should have aided in developing and cultivating the tastes of their children, may possibly find, ere long, that there are no tastes to be developed save those acquired in the streets, where habits have been formed which it is now all but impossible to root out. Their children have, as the phrase is, got beyond them; not because, as is often falsely asserted, juvenile human nature is different now from what it was in other ages, or because its lot happens to be cast in the United States of America, but because parents have not done their part to multiply and strengthen the sweet and powerful ties that could and should bind their children indissolubly to them."
To warn parents against this evil, to cause them to be kind to their children, and to bind the child more closely to its home, the author has written these Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, in which mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters are made to speak and act in so natural a manner that every reader will be forced to love them.
In those happy homes, we find boys full of life and fun, but always eager to listen to interesting and useful instruction; girls who are not dolls, made to act and speak by machine; and fathers and mothers whose example will force every parent to give a little thought to the manner in which they treat their offspring. The story of little Frank will be long remembered by those who read it, and all will like the manly little fellow, who gravely says:
"'I should rather be whatever it is right to be,' returned the boy. 'The Catholics have the Blessed Virgin, and I think they must be right, for every one knows the Lord would not let his own mother stay in the wrong place. I asked Mr. Griffin was she a Calvinist or a Unitarian, and he said no, that she was a Catholic. Now, I want to be of her church, and I don't see why I cannot receive the sacraments as well as Tommy and Bernard. Please, mamma, allow me, and I'll be ever so good and steady.'" And immediately after tells us that John Griffin is a first-rate fellow, because "he gives me lots of fruit, and tells me pleasant stories about birds and angels."
Every story in this book will amuse the young, interest the old, and instruct all in the secret ways of showing kindness to those with whom they may come in contact. Kindness is the author's watchword; every line bears witness to her love of her fellow-beings; she fulfils her mission of kindness in a delightfully pleasant manner, and few will finish reading The Glimpses without wishing for many more such pictures, and hoping that the author may enjoy a little of that happiness on this earth, which she so lavishly bestows on her readers.
Black Forest.
Village Stories
by Berthold Auerbach.
Translated by Charles Goepp.
New York: Leypoldt & Holt.
This volume is a collection of stories from the German, filled with quaint illustrations of peasant life in the Black Forest. The representations are well drawn and life-like; but the tales, with two or three exceptions, fail to interest, except as illustrations of strange phases of human life, and odd customs retained from age to age by people who seldom left their own hamlets, or heard from the outer world.