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Books and Reading.

A Youthful
Critic

In this department, not many months ago, an inquiry was made about reading poetry, the idea being to find out from young readers themselves whether they would choose poetry for the mere pleasure it gave them, rather than from a feeling that they ought to like it. Several letters replied to the question, describing an enthusiastic love for poetry. In one of these letters occurs the sentence, “I think Tennyson the greatest poet that ever lived.”

We have no wish to check young enthusiasm, but we doubt whether the writer, who is thirteen years old, fully understands how much her sentence Tennyson, all will admit, ranks high among poets, but is not our little friend somewhat forgetful of the claims of a few others? Perhaps, before putting the English Laureate of Victoria’s reign at the head of the class, she might consider more carefully the merits of Homer and Dante, Shakspere and Milton, Virgil and Chaucer—to name a half-dozen that might be thought worthy of her attention. But the object of naming these neglected worthies is only to point out to the critic that she has not said what she probably meant to say. Did she not mean: “Of all the poetry I read, I like Tennyson's best”? If that was her meaning, she deserves praise for good taste, and not blame for exaggeration.

“Snowed
Under”

Perhaps in future ages this period of ours may be known as the “Age of the Printing Press,” though ever since printing came into general use, there have been complaints of the deluge of books. We know, at all events, how much there is to read, and how one thing pushes aside another.

Would it not be well to keep a little note-book in which to enter the names of “things we mean to read,” so that they will not be snowed under and forgotten? There are so many valuable articles in the magazines that the best of them should not be pushed aside by the new numbers which follow on so quickly.

A Boy Makes
His Own
Bookplate

We take pleasure in showing the little design here printed, and we hope it will encourage others of the St. Nicholas girls and boys to make their own designs for bookplates. The writer of this letter has won a number of prizes in League contests.
Dear St. Nicholas: As you are interested in children’s bookplates, I would like to send you mine, I want to say that the idea is not original with me, but I executed it, with my drawing-teacher’s help. I had thought of a plate before your article appeared, and that quickened my interest in it; so now I have it.

I am thirteen years old, and have finished my first year in the High School. I enjoy St. Nicholas very much, I am very fond of reading, and think Ernest Thompson Seton’s books fine. “Rag,” and “Molly Cottontail,” and “Krag,” are among my favorites in his books. I wonder if St. Nicholas readers know of “Eye-Spy?” by William Hamilton Gibson, among nature books.

With best wishes for the magazine,

I am, your reader,
Geddes Smith.

Another Corre-
spondent

Inclosed in a letter from Maryland comes a little map, drawn to make plain the story, “In a Brazilian Jungle,” evidently an account of life not far from Rio de Janeiro. This reminds us to inquire whether our young readers all know what an interesting land is the great South American continent—extending from the very modern civilization of the northern countries to the desert wastes of the Land of Fire—Terra del Fuego, Brazil alone, as some of the stories

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