What to Do with our Boys and Girls. Edited by
John Watson, F.L.S. This is an eminently practical little book. In less than two hundred pages, a number of experienced and well-informed writers—such as Sir George Baden-Powell, Sir Herbert Maxwell, Mr. Yoxall, Professor Nicholson, Miss Cleraentina Black, Mrs. D. Murphy, and Miss Sholl—tell us, not what ought to be done with our boys and girls in some best of all possible worlds, but what, as a matter of fact, is done for them now in the Colonies (more particularly Canada and Australia), and in various trades, pro- fessions, and "services." We learn a variety of things, such as that (according to Sir George Baden-Powell) "immediate employ- ment" can be secured in Canada by "the Girton girl or the farm- girl, the University graduate or the fisher-boy," if "not afraid to work ; " that for a woman-journalist (according to Miss Black) "the possession of the indefinable but perfectly recognisable quality of good breeding is especially necessary ; " that (according to Mr. Yoxall) "the teacher's life may be described as a rut, with few outlets, and little reward at the end of it ; " that the position of a female clerk in the Post-Office "is not brilliant, but it is safe and comfortable, and exceedingly respectable ;" and that "perhaps in no field, of labour does so comparatively small an outlay in training yield such a quick return" as in the teaching of cookery. The state- ments made by the different writers are, without exception, clear and terse, and are fortified by figures and statistics, mostly official. There is no over-colouring, no rose-coloured optimism ; on the contrary, warnings are uttered against profes- sions that are already too crowded. Altogether, this is a well- written, well-edited, and very useful volume.
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