Don Q in the Sierra. By K. and H. Prichard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Price, $1.50.
The thousands of admirers of “Don Q,” the crafty bandit, elusive and fearless, with claws under velvet that tear with merciless fury when roused to action, will be delighted with these new chronicles of further thrilling adventures of that mysterious character. The joint authorship of the “Don Q” stories is the rather unusual combination of mother and son, who, having traveled extensively in Spain and Spanish America, are able to put the local color into their stories with sure hands. It would, perhaps, be saying too much to declare that the portrait of the bandit is drawn from acquaintance with the original character, but no one can doubt that the authors have met with many adventures and heard many stories at first hand which have suggested the polished outlaw.
Saul of Tarsus. By Elizabeth Miller. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Price, $1.50.
This story presents Saul during the time of his persecution of the Nazarenes and the death of St. Stephen of Galilee, before he became St. Paul of the Christian Church. The period immediately succeeding the crucifixion is the most stirringly interesting of any in the world’s history. Never before or since has there been such a wave of deep feeling, of psychological uplift and high thought, mingled with the warring of the fiercest passions and the basest corruption. Miss Miller has given us, as in “The Yoke,” a skillful weaving of heart-stirring incidents and a love story of the purest and noblest type.
A Child’s Book of Abridged Wisdom. By Childe Harold. New York: Paul Elder & Co. Price, $1.50.
A delight to the beauty-loving soul is this little book for the amusement of the children, bound in heavy gray boards, with quaint, corded back and heavy hand-pressed paper. The drawings and marginal decorations are in true Childe Harold style, which is a guarantee of their worth.
Over in the Meadow. By Olive A. Wadsworth. New York and San Francisco: Morgan Shepard Co. Price, $1.
Mrs. Wadsworth has elaborated and improved an old nursery classic. The first eight topics are in their original form, but she has added four others in the same style, and Mabel Wood Hill has set them to appropriate music. Each full page is prefaced by another verse on the same subject, but in different meter, and the whole is beautifully bound in brown boards, with line decorations of birds and beasts in colors, the drawings being the handiwork of Marguerite Wood and Harold Sichel.
The Romance of John Bainbridge. By Henry George, Jr. New York: The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.50.
A big factory for art stained glass is not a likely place to look for romance, but Mr. George has laid in such a scene a story of fascinating interest. The action covers also the great West and mining, timber cutting and the practice of law in those regions. The central theme of the story, however, is a study of municipal government under existing methods of election and maintenance. Conspiracies, lobbying, bribery, blackmailing and other concomitants of present-day government politics are laid bare in a convincing manner, while the love story keeps and holds the reader’s interest in these questions.