nt was speedily
recognized. Even now "Birthday Stories" are worth reading and treasuring
because of the pictures of family life eighty years ago. The "Souvenir,"
for example, is a Christmas tale of old Philadelphia; the "Cadet's
Sister" sketches life at West Point, where the author's brother had been
a student; while the "Launch of the Frigate" and "Anthony and Clara"
tell of customs and amusements quite passed away. The charming
description of children shopping for their simple Christmas gifts, the
narrative of the boys who paid a poor lad in a bookstore to ornament
their "writing-pieces" for more "respectable presents" to parents, the
quiet celebration of the day itself, can ill be spared from the history
of child life and diversions in America. It is well to be reminded, in
these days of complex and expensive amusements, of some of the saner and
simpler pleasures enjoyed by children in Miss Leslie's lifetime.

All of this writer's books, moreover, have some real interest, whether
it be "Althea Vernon," with the description of summer life and fashions
at Far Rockaway (New York's Manhattan Beach of 1830), or "Henrietta
Harrison," with its sarcastic reference to the fashionable school where
the pupils could sing French songs and Italian operas, but could not be
sure of the notes of "Hail Columbia." Or again, the account is worth
reading of the heroine's trip to New York from Philadelphia. "Simply
habited in a plaid silk frock and Thibet shawl," little Henrietta
starts, under her uncle's protection, at five o'clock in the morning to
take the boat for Bordentown, New Jersey. There she has her first
experience of a railway train, and looks out of the window "at all the
velocity of the train will allow her to see." At Heightstown small
children meet the train with fruit and cakes to sell to hungry
travellers. And finally comes the wonderful voyage from Amboy to the
Battery in New York, which is not reached until night has fallen.

This is the simple explanation as to why Eliza Leslie's books met with
so generous a reception: they were full of the incidents which children
love, and unusually free from the affectations of the pious fictitious
heroine.

The stories of Miss Catharine Sedgwick also received most favorable
criticism, and in point of style were certainly better than Miss
Leslie's. Her reputation as a literary woman was more than national, and
"Redwood," one of her best novels, was attributed in France to Fenimor