Stories for Somebody. By Edith Carrington. Illustrated by Mrs. H.
M. Stanley (Dorothy Tennant). (Griffith, Farran, and Co.)— These are about as pretty and well-told stories of their kind as we have ever seen. It is difficult to say which of the six we prefer Perhaps " An Untidy Story " is as good as any. Miss Mary, the untidy young person, moves our sympathy, especially in her verbal conflicts with Nurse, who is always ready with her didactic stories : " I once knew a little girl," &c. Admirable, too, in the Hans Andersen style, is the description of the unhappiness caused by Mary's thrusting her toys into the wrong places, putting Noah among a party of rowdy young soldiers, and sending three soldiers to join a dolls' tea-party. The adventures of Kitty, also, are very prettily told. And here is an excellent bit from the " Five Sparrows." Whether birds confabulate in this fashion or not, we cannot say ; but some of us may recognise a resemblance to talk that we have heard ourselves. " It is time the children should begin to fly now,' said the father-bird ; they are beginning to feel their wings, and will soon want to leave the neat together. It will relieve my mind of a load of care.' Ah ! you have not the heart of a mother !' said the little mate ; when they are safe under my wings I am happy ; but who knows what will happen to them when they can fly ?" Chirp, chirp, tut, tut, tut,' said the father-bird; 'they will be all right. And you will have me left.' " The illustrations, especially when the artist gets to her peculiar subject of the street-arab, are very good. The frontispiece, too, the ennuyde little Maggie, is excellent.
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