“Pretty Lucy Merwyn”[J] is a charming story for the young. There is a freshness and an individuality about it that captivates the reader from the first. The racy, original little speeches of Lucy and her companions have in them a naturalness that is seldom found, and the descriptions of their travels abroad are so vivid that those reading half believe that they themselves are visiting the “memory haunted lands beyond the seas.” It is written in good style and in the purest English. Marion Harland, with her usual good sense in taking everything new and good into the kitchen, has prepared a “Calendar”[K] for housewives. It is the aptest device we have ever seen for furnishing a daily inspiration to model housekeeping. No woman with a spark of household pride in her soul can pull away the leaves of this pretty calendar day by day and read the bright thoughts, the practical hints, and the encouraging words which Mrs. Terhune has put on them without profit. It is a pretty object, too, for a wall, with its richly colored sketch of Marion Harland herself, sitting in the corner of her library. A choice little book is the one containing two brief sketches called “Miss Toosey’s Mission” and “Laddie.”[L] One experiences something of a sense of wrong on looking in vain at the title page for the author’s name. Both stories are written in a delightful manner, and find their way straight to one’s heart. Would that there were more like poor Miss Toosey, who grieve over making just such failures of their lives as she thought she had. Could she only have known of the purpose which she fanned to life in the breast of strong John Rossiter to go into the mission field and really do what she so fondly dreamed of once, she would have felt that she had wrought “better than she knew.” The “Laddie” was a prominent physician in London, who years before as an uncommonly promising youth had left his simple rural home and poor mother. The story tells of how she went to find him, and the thoughtless words he spoke which made her leave his grand house, and of the long search he had for her and the sad finding. The firm, convinced statements of Dr. Van Dyke in “The Reality of Religion”[M] are a welcome change from much “popular” writing and preaching on religious themes. To him there is no question of the truths of the Bible. God is _manifest_ as a physical reality, a moral reality, an historical reality, a spiritual reality. The saving power of the Cross of Christ is no theory; it is a fact. The whole is ringing with the perfect confidence the writer feels in the living truths which he presents. It carries in its tone conviction. The book is a strong argument for what it teaches. If one man has found such perfect knowledge no reader can afford to overlook his experience. It is a forcible appeal to unbelievers; it is splendid help to wavering minds.