LITERARY NOTICES. 



77 



displaying much skill in construction and 

 development, claim our attention. What's 

 bred in the Bone (Benjamin R. Tucker, pub- 

 lisher, Boston) is a story of certain aspects of 

 English social life by an author well known 

 to our readers, Grant Allen. The story is 

 told in a terse, vigorous style, without pad- 

 ding by expansion or episodes ; the intrica- 

 cies and complexities of the plot are tangled 

 and untangled as by the hand of a master 

 at the business ; and an intense interest is 

 wrought out. The name of the story seems 

 to relate to a singular power of fascination 

 which the heroine inherits from a gypsy 

 ancestor, and to the persistency with which 

 the gentle birth of the hero and his brother, 

 made by circumstances friendless waifs on 

 the surface of society, is declared in their 

 acts and manners. 



In Juggernaut (Fords, Howard & IIul- 

 bert) a chapter of American life and expe- 

 rience is handled with great power and truth 

 to the reality by George Cary Eggleston and 

 Dolores Marbourg. The Juggernaut is the 

 idol ambition, or the car worldly success, 

 under which an American starting as a young 

 man with pure and noble intentions, and the 

 purpose to maintain his character, is cast, 

 with his wife, who has had simple and as 

 pure beginnings, to be crushed. The story 

 is one of the ruin of character that is so 

 common in our financial and political life. 

 The young editor, who has been honest and 

 free, and is determined to continue so, is un- 

 wittingly drawn into the power of a schemer 

 on whom he is for the time dependent, and 

 is compelled to prostitute his paper for the 

 furtherance of a single design of the other. 

 He is determined to get the better of his 

 master, and does it ; becoming in his turn a 

 speculator, financial operator, senator, and 

 political schemer ; making his wife, who was 

 designed for the best things, his lobbyist, 

 till she revolts at her fate, and ruin over- 

 takes the pair. The story furnishes an in- 

 structive illustration of the fatal tendency 

 of what are two conspicuous features of our 

 national life. 



A third story, by J! Van Lcnnep, translated 

 from the French by Mrs. Clara Bell, T7ic Story 

 of an Abduction in the Seventeenth Century, 

 is based on history. The foundation narra- 

 tive is related in the fifth volume of Aitzema's 

 Affairs of State and War, and concerns the 



carrying away from her friends by Johan 

 Diederick de Mortaigne of a Dutch young 

 lady, Catharine d'Orleans, and the pur- 

 suit of them, with divers political and 

 diplomatic complications which the event 

 evolved. 



Our Language is the name of a modest 

 journal of eight pages, devoted to preserv- 

 ing and improving the English speech, which 

 is edited and published monthly by Mr. Fred- 

 erik A. Fernald in this city (1778 Topping 

 Street, fifty cents a year). The editor is an 

 experienced journalist of literary taste and 

 acquirements, and is an earnest advocate of 

 a rational reform in spelling. That subject, 

 the derivation and right use of words, and 

 proper constructions are the chief topics dis- 

 cussed in its pages, and the spirit of the dis- 

 cussions is candid and catholic. Eccentric 

 notions are not tolerated ; and, while Our 

 Language favors further reforms in spelling, 

 it practically uses those changes only which 

 have been agreed upon by all the reform- 

 ers. The editor is in personal communica- 

 tion with the leaders in the reform move- 

 ment, and enjoys their co-operation in his 

 enterprise. 



Science of Every-day Life and Science 

 applied to Work (Cassell) are two conven- 

 ient and useful treatises prepared by John 

 A. Bower, the former for the Young People's 

 and the other for the Artisan section of the 

 National Home Reading Union. The chap- 

 ters in Science of Every-day Life treat of 

 some of the most common things, and the 

 reasons for their existence : matter, weight, 

 motion, air, combustion, and water; and 

 furnish a few simple, rudimentary experi- 

 ments. Science applied to Work is intended 

 to be a useful introduction to the Science of 

 Practical Mechanics, free from mathematical 

 formulas, and to furnish hints for making 

 mechanical experiments with simple con- 

 trivances. Both works aim to be clear and 

 accurate in all their statements. 



Having been, as an analytical and con- 

 sulting chemist, frequently called upon to 

 give information on the subject of water in 

 its relations to disease, and having had much 

 to do with the subject in connection with the 

 Iowa State Board of Health, Dr. Floyd 

 Davis has been happily prompted to prepare 

 A n Elementary Handbook on Potable Water, 

 which is published by Silver, Burdett & Co. 



