C. M. L.
NEW BOOKS.
(Published by D. Lothrop Company.)
True Manliness. By Thomas Hughes. Price $1. I want to say a word about this book to a certain dear little girl I know who has a whole dollar with which to buy papa’s Christmas present, and who cannot decide what to buy. She knows papa likes books better than almost anything else, but then, how should a young girl know what book to select for a man who has gray hair?
My darling, I feel sure papa would like this very book. It is the reason I selected it from a large number of others, to tell the Pansies about, because I thought of you and your dollar. A very pretty book in a deep maroon binding, with three hundred pages of reading matter, and all of it put in paragraphs so that a busy man, who has but a few minutes to read, can seize this volume, get some sweet and helpful thoughts from it, during the five minutes when he is waiting for the mail, or for the street-car, and then go on his busy way. Just the thing for your hurried papa, don’t you see? In fact the book belongs to a set, named “The Spare Minute Series,” gotten up for just such waitings as I have described.
“Would the book be ‘nice’ for you to read?”
Well, no, little girlie, I’m inclined to think it would be rather “grown-up” for you, because, you see, it was written to help your grown-up papa and mamma. There are bits in it that you would like; and your fifteen-year-old brother would often read words in it that would please and help him. I open the book at random, and find these words under the heading of “Courage.”
“After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.
“Every one who is worth his salt, has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians.”
Don’t you know your brother said, only a few days ago when he got cross and things went wrong, that he felt as though he should like to fight somebody?