LITERARY NOTES. 
6797 
THREE NOTABLE SERIAL STORIES BY AMERI- 
^ CAN WRITERS. 
Three very remarkable serial stories are to appear in 
Scribner’s Monthly during the present year. 
The first, “ Gabriel Conroy,” by Bret Harte, has 
been already begun. Mr. Harte won his early fame as 
a writer in California, and this story, as might have 
been expected, is a romance of the Pacific slope. 
The HaHford Courant says of the story ; “ The 
study of American progress would be incomplete with- 
out a knowledge of the life which Mr. Harte writes 
about. In this way his writings are of importance, 
and essentially a national treasure. His new story will 
contain the richest and ripest results of his observa- 
tion and studies for years past.” 
The second, “ Philip "Nolan’s Friends,” is by 
Edward Everett Hale, and will begin in January. 
This story comes to us from the literary center of New 
England — if not of the country — New York disputing 
with it now the wider claim. Mr. Hale is a Unitarian 
clergyman, but he is better known by his shorter 
stories, which, of their kind, have never been equaled 
by any American author. 
The present work is an historical novel for the Cen- 
tennial year, and it will be, perhaps, the great romance 
of the Mississippi Valley. The scene is laid along the 
banks of the lower Mississippi, at a time when the 
Louisiana purchase was first Spanish, then French, 
and then American ; at a time when war was im- 
minent between this country and Spain to obtain 
possession of the mouth of the Mississippi. Captain 
Nolan, from whom the story receives its name, was a 
native of Frankfort, Kentucky, a well-educated young 
man, remembered as athletic, energetic, amiable and 
brave. No period of our history has more dramatic 
points of interest than that in which he and his friends 
The third of these serials is “ That Lass o’ Low- 
rie’s,” by Fanny Hodgson Burnett. 
At the conclusion of Bret Harte’s story, which it 
is now understood will be in July, “That Lass o’ 
Lowrie’s ” will be commenced in the Magazine. Those 
who have read “ Surly Tim’s Trouble,” “One Day at 
Arle,” ‘‘The Fire at Grantley Mills,” and others of 
Mrs. Burnett’s short stories, will not need to be assured 
that they have a rare treat before them in this her first 
novel. The scene of the new novel is laid in an Eng- 
lish mining town ; the characters, it is said, are drawn 
with marvelous power, and from the first page to the 
last the interest of the book is unflagging. Mrs. Bur- 
nett is a young woman who has come to the front with- 
out the advantages of liberal culture, but by the force of 
native genius. Her early childhood was spent in Eng- 
land, but she has lived in Tennessee for many years. 
BOY LOST! 
What a thrilling cry is this? How it vibrates along 
the heart-strings of every parent, and thrills through a 
whole city! And yet it is of hourly occurrence. A 
hundred thousand boys in homes of culture and refine- 
ment are every year lost by reason of the poison of bad 
books, and bad sensational romances. Almost every 
week a boy is found at some railway station with a 
revolver in one pocket and a sensational story paper in 
the other, having run away from home to lead a life of 
adventure. 
Give the boys good, strong, entertaining reading at 
home. Give them the best of books and the best of 
the magazines. John G. Whittier, our Quaker poet, 
writes : “ It is little to say of St. Nicholas that it is 
the best child’s periodical in the world.” 
SEEING THE WORLD. 
A late editorial in a leading daily paper, headed 
“ Certain Holiday Books,” attributes the mutiny on 
the school-ship to the inflamed ambition of some of 
the lads who had been reading the adventures of a 
certain cheap hero of the Bowery Variety. The same 
article goes on to show that the modern parent’s guilty 
neglect, if not positive misdirection of the “ boy’s taste 
for reading,” is the fruitful cause of the mass of boy 
crime that of late has startled thinking people into 
closer observation — and finally it adds these very sug- 
gestive words : 
“ The Mayor of Philadelphia, it is said, asserts that 
he could rid the jails of two-thirds of the juvenile crim- 
inals in the next year, if he could banish certain plays 
from the boards of the Variety theaters, and put certain 
books out of print. We only suggest these facts to 
mothers and fathers. It is their part to clear the jails 
in future. No Mayor can help them.” 
Now, it will not do to take fascinating and bad liter- 
ature out of these boys’ hands, and give them in its 
place Mrs. Barbauld and Peter Parley, or worse still, 
the sentimental dribblings of those writers who think 
that any “ good-y ’ ’ talk will do for children. We must 
give them good, strong, interesting reading, with the 
Wood and sinew of real life in it — heartsome, pleasant 
reading, that will waken them to a closer observation 
of the best things about them. 
The great mental evil of the day is the impression 
invariaWy given to young minds that seeing the world 
necessarily means seeing the badness of the world. 
Once let a boy understand that to see the world in a fair, 
manly way, one must see also its good side, its nobleness 
and true progress, and you at once put his soul in the 
way of a wholesome growth. 
It is right and natural for a boy to want to see the 
world. It is right and natural for him to want to read 
books that, according to his light, show him what the 
The wrong and the unnaturalness are in the careless 
way in which parents and guardians ignore this want, 
or fail to meet it in a proper manner. 
Vile writers and worse publishers are fattening on 
this tendency of boys and this carelessness of parents. 
Good writers and honest publishers are offering the 
means of remedying the great evil, and are showing 
the boys of this country how they may see the world 
and yet remain pure and true. 
Parents must decide which class of writers and pub- 
lishers shall win the race. — Sunday School Times. 
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