ABSTRACT
Shades of the venerable Mr. Day, of the instructive Mrs. Barbauld, of the persuasive Miss Edgeworth! Had you the power of sitting today beside the reviewer's desk, and were called upon to pass judgment on the books written and printed for the boys and girls of today, would you not have groaned and moaned over their perusal? If such superlatively good children as Harry and Lucy could have existed, or even such nondescript prigs as Sandford and Merton had abnormal being, this other question presents itself to our mind: 'How would these precious children have enjoyed Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer?' In all books written for the amusement of children there are two distinct phases of appreciation. What the parent thinks of the book is one thing; what the child thinks of it is another. It is fortunate when both parent and child agree in their conclusions. Such double appreciation may, in most instances, simply be one in regard to the fitness of the book on the part of the parent. A course of reading entirely devoted to juvenile works must be to an adult a tax on time and patience. It is only once in many years that such a charming book as Little Alice i11 Wonderlaud is produced, which old and young could read with thorough enjoyment. If, thirty years ago, Tom Sawyer had been placed in a careful father's hands to read, the probabilities would have been that he would have hesitated before giving the book to his boy-not that Mr. Clemens' book is exceptional in character, or differs in the least, save in its cleverness, from a host of similar books on like topics which are
universallyreadbychildrentoday.Itisthejudgmentofthebookgiverswhichhasundoubtedlyundergoneachange,whileyouthful minds,beingfreefromwarp,twist,ordogma,haveremainedever thesame.
