tion, place, time, possession, feeling, dress, asthetic details, sentiment, and moral qualities. This is, however, but re-stating in our modern quasi-scientific way what many writers out of their sympathy with and insight into the child mind have said long ago. Lady Eastlake wrote over sixty years since: The real secret of a child's book consists not merely in its being less dry and less difficult but more rich in interest, more true to nature, more exquisite in art, more abundant in every quality that replies to childhood's keener and fresher perceptions. Such being the case, the best of juvenile reading will be found in libraries belonging to their elders, while the best juvenile writing will not fail to delight those who are no longer children. Robinson Crusoe,' the standing favourite of above a century, was not originally written for children; and Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather,' addressed solely to them, are the pleasure and profit of every age, from childhood upwards. Our lite friends tear Pope's Odyssey' from mamma's hands, while she takes up their Agathos' with an admiration which no child's can

exceed.'

I had occasion recently to refer to the original of Mary had a little Lamb,' which was written by Sarah Josepha Hale, and published in a school song-book in Boston in 1834, and we may find in this very book a text which. illustrates the whole of this discussion. Sarah Josepha Hale wrote a great deal of verse-there are some two dozen or more songs in this little book-but the one quoted is the only one that has lived, and why? It is a clear case of the survival of the fittest. It is the direct, simple story of an action, of the doing of something with which the children themselves are familiar, with something which almost every child knows and loves. There is the human interest and the interest in animal life. There is no fine writing, and there is a moral drawn which is entirely within the grasp of the child mind. The sentiment appeals to every child as much as the incident,

and why? Because it is exactly within the child's range of experience.

'What makes the lamb love Mary so?

The cager children cry.

Oh! Mary loves the lamb you know,
The teacher did reply.'

There is not a babe that responds to a mother's caress who cannot understand and does not respond to this sentiment. Now compare this with the other poems in the book from which this was taken. Every one of them is devoid of action which would interest the child, is introspective, is moralizing, or it is beyond the child's feelings and experiences.

Now it will be found that if we apply the above quoted standard of elements which interest, in a general way, to this little poem and to all the other children's literature which has lived, we shall find that it will conform and respond to it, while the bulk of those books which are forgotten will conform to it also, but in the inverted order.

All this brings us back to the point from which I started and confirms in a remarkable degree the quotations with which I began. The real touchstone, as Lady Eastlake said, is the child himself. He has sturdily rejected the 'juveniles' by the ton and by the hundred thousand, and the reason for this is obvious in the light of the foregoing. We are at last beginning to recognize these great principles and the study of the history of children's literature should do immense good by bringing out the truth of them more strongly. It shows that it is the birthright of the child to enter into the domain of the world's best literature, and to choose therefrom what is best suited to its needs, and it shows, too, that the children of all ages when they have had the opportunity to do so have exercised that right. It is, however, no less the duty of the parent and the teacher to select within very broad limits those books which contain the right mental food, and to put them before the

child at the right time, and it is encouraging to notice how much good work is being done to help them in this direction by the coöperation of the Public School and the Public Library all over the United States. Those lists which are being issued by many of the libraries, in which no attempt at cast-iron grading is made, for this is really impossible, but in which the books are arranged in groups to correspond with the growing mental needs of the child so as to give ample margin for individual tastes, tendencies, and developments, are proving of inestimable value to teachers, to parents, and to the children alike. CHARLES WELSH.

HOW TO OPEN A NEW BOOK.

VERY librarian knows, and every lover of books soon learns, that to insert the two thumbs in the centre of a book, and to hold the leaves down agst the covers tightly, and force the book open flat is an unwise proceeding. The book ever afterwards has a tendency to fall open in the same place, and if the front edge be marbled or gilt, an ugly ridge, technically called a "start," defaces it as a result.

Beyond a plea for care and tenderness in the handling of a new volume, little advice

has hitherto been tendered by
experts as to the best way to
handle a book fresh from the
bookseller or binder. Fig. 1
shows the method above de-
scribed, and it illustrates how not to open a new book.

FIG. 1.

It should be remembered that in opening a book the convexity of the back is suddenly changed into concavity, and if it is also understood that the back, underneath the

covering material, has been coated with glue, paper, or other stiffening material, so that quite a brittle surface has to be dealt with, the necessity for conducting the operation of "breaking in" the book gently is sufficiently apparent. Care, then, is required that the alternative concavity of the back shall not be sharply broken at an angle as in Fig. 1, but that an attempt should be made when opening the book for the first few times to

FIG. 2.

bend it in an arc. It will in this way become pliable, and will afterwards open gratefully where it is desired.

In order to effect this, a new book should at first be seized in the manner here shown (Fig. 2). A few of the leaves, say sixteen.

so on each side, should be held tightly to the boards by the first fingers, while the thumbs should be inserted a few leaves nearer the centre, and made to hold these leaves a little less firmly as the covers are opened slightly apart, as in Fig. 3. The book is then closed, and, taking a few more leaves

from the centre, the fingers and thumbs are inserted in the same way on each side. It is to be carefully observed that the leaves held by the index finger close to the boards are to be tightly held, whilst those held by the thumbs are to be allowed to give as the boards are again forced open, this time a little further back, as in Fig. 4.

Again closing the book, the fingers and thumbs in the same way as before, gather more leaves from the centre of the volume, and force the covers yet farther, as in Fig. 5. The same operation is repeated by again gathering more leaves toward the covers (Figs. 6 and 7), until (Fig. 8) the

centre of the book is nearly reached, some two dozen leaves, or three sections, being left to prevent the production of an acute angle.

The back of the book has now been bent and not broken open. Its pliability may be further improved by

holding about three-fourths of the leaves in the right hand (Fig. 9), and with the left gathering a few leaves under the thumb, and leaving a few leaves loose, the cover should be pressed downwards, so that the back at the commencement of the book may be bent. Again closing it, and opening it at the other end, the book must be held as in the illustration (Fig. 10) by the left hand, and the