London Street - Arabs. By Mrs. H. M. Stanley (Dorothy Tennant). (Cassell
and Co.)—Mrs. Stanley begins by giving us some seven
or eight pages of introduction: In these she tells us how she came to take up this subject of her pencil, how she set about getting models, and what experiences she met with. And she makes some suggestions for those who would follow her example.
—suggesting, for instance, a method of getting an ideally ragged child. You begin by finding an ordinary specimen, and promise him a reward if he will bring some one more ragged than him- self. This process you repeat with number two, till at last you reach what you want. All this is excellent, both true and entertaining, and showing that Mrs. Stanley has used both good sense and good feeling in carrying out her work. The drawings, some forty in number, are, we think, somewhat variable in merit.
The baby's face in the first seems to us considerably too old ; we should say that it belonged to a much older child. In the next, the two boys, especially the little fellow leaning up against a post, are admirable. "Blind Man's Buff" is very spirited; and
the tramps, a father and mother with six children, also very good, though these are certainly not "London street-arabs," but
a group such as one often sees on a country high-road. Indeed, the background of the picture, so far as it is distinguishable, is a rural scene. The next plate to this is worthy of much praise.
The boy making a wheelbarrow of his little companion, and the two children investigating the treasures hidden under a grating, are equally good. The next to this, again, is full of genuine pathos. The dancing children are less successful. This book will please, and, one may hope, do something more than please.
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