BOOK NOTICES. 715 



The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. By J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. 

 Ward; octavo: pp. 899. I. K. Funk & Co., New York. Cloth, $5. 



No recent publication that has come under our observation has given us so 

 much genuine gratification as this. First, on account of the wide range of 

 subjects touched upon, and the extensive list of authors of every age and nation- 

 ality quoted. Second, on account of the admirable arrangement of the work, 

 and lastly, on account of the remarkable skill displayed in the selection of the 

 quotations themselves. It is one thing to gather together a quantity of ill-assort- 

 ed and pointless or trite and stale sentences; quite another to select elegant, 

 forcible and adaptable expressions — sparkling gems of thought in brilliant word- 

 settings. In this respect the success of Mr. Hoyt and Miss Ward has been re- 

 markable, which is necessarily due to the fitting combination of talent employed; 

 the practical appreciation of the wants of the literary public by the experienced 

 journalist, and the rare artistic skill of the cultured woman in making, almost by 

 intuition, the proper selections ; the business-like laying out of the work by the 

 one, and the untiring, careful, earnest toil of the other. 



It far exceeds any work of the kind that has ever been published, in size, 

 scope and availability; no less than 625 double-column pages being devoted to 

 English, Latin, French, German and Spanish quotations; over one thousand 

 authors quoted and their names and nativities given ; more than eleven hundred 

 English and Latin subjects referred to, and more than two hundred and forty 

 pages of three columns each filled by an exhaustive concordance, by which every 

 quotation can be instantly found if the reader knows a single leading word of it. 

 Seventeen thousand quotations are included in the work, besides definitions of 

 ecclesiastical and law terms and phrases, etc. 



We unhesitatingly recommend it to writers, teachers, students and all others 

 who desire or require a work of reference of the kind, as unequaled and almost 

 unsurpassable. 



Opium Smoking in America and China. By H. H. Kane, M. D.; i6mo. 

 pp. 156. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. For sale by M. H. Dickinson, 

 price $1.00. 



The author, who is also the author of "Drugs that Enslave," asserts that 

 opium smoking is a vice that imperatively demands a careful study at the hands of 

 the American people, from the fact that the practice, comparatively unknown 

 amongst us six years ago, is now indulged in by some six thousand of our coun- 

 trymen, male and female, whose ranks are being daily recruited ; that large and 

 small towns in the west and large cities in the east abound in places where this 

 drug is sold and smoked, and that in some of our States it has become necessary 

 to enact laws for its prevention and suppression. 



Dr. Kane's account of the, origin and spread of this vice in America is both 

 interesting and startling; commencing in San Francisco, in 1868, and within 

 fourteen years reaching to the above figures and extent, it is enough to alarm 



