Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/347

 THE JOHN C. WINSTON Co/s POPUEAR JUVENILES.

J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

NSrt'HHR as a writer does lie stand apart from tlie great currents of life and select some exceptional phase or odd combination of circumstances. He stands on the common level and appeals to the universal heart, and all that he sug- gests or achieves is on the plane and in the line of march of the great body of humanity.

The Jack Hazard series of stories, published in the late Our Young Folks, and continued in the first volume of St. Nicholas, under the title of “Fast Friends,” is no doubt destined to hold a high place in this class of literature. The delight of the boys in them (and of their seniors, too) is well founded. They go to the right spot every time. Trow- bridge knows the heart of a boy like a book, and the heart of a man, too, and he has laid them both open in these books in a most successful manner. Apart from the qualities that render the series so attractive to all young readers, they have great value on account of their portraitures of American, country life and character. The drawing is wonderfully accurate, and as spirited as it is true. The constable, Sel- lick, is an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pip- kin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink’s school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, “ Step Hen,” as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his les- son in school.

On the whole, these books are very satisfactory, and afford the critical reader the rare pleasure of the works that ere just adequate, that easily fulfill themselves and accoiO* plish all they set out to ^.^^Scribncf s Monthly*