THE old St. Nicholas slyly tossed bags of gold into poor widows' houses, and then ran away. His modern namesake has been trying these seven or eight years to send by the postman, to all children within his reach, that which ought to give more lasting happiness and benefit than the money-bags which the older saint dropped in at the window. THE ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE is a fine flower of the nineteenth century. For childhood, as we understand it, is a recent discovery. The world had neither books, pictures, toys, nor other implements of happiness suited to child-nature until our own time. What a step from the rude horn-books and incomprehensible catechisms to the pictures and stories of this day, in which the best literary ability, the highest artistic skill, the ablest and most experienced editing, the largest publishing enterprise, and the finest mechanical appliances are all enlisted and combined to rejoice and enlighten children! Surely the generations growing in such sunlight ought to make a new earth after a while-a more cheerful, beautiful, humane world than we have seen. THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE MAGAZINE. MEN and women are just as truly the result of the atmosphere in which they have passed their childhood, as the trees and herb age of a country are the result of soil and climate. It is by the subtle something which we call atmosphere, rather than by direct teaching, that the home molds a child. The chief business of a mother is to surround a child with beautiful influences. The great school-masters, such as Arnold of Rugby, Gunn of the "Gunnery," and many others, have achieved worthy results by the moral and intellectual climate they were able to produce, rather than by methods of teaching. So the benefit of a good story does not come from the moral that it teaches, but is in the air which one breathes in reading it; while the most malarial books are often those which attempt to teach a direct moral, but which subject the reader to evil influences. The supreme quality of ST. NICHOLAS is its bright, healthful, and invigorating atmosphere. The young reader is not bored with unreadable prosing on moral subjects; there are few "Didactic Pieces," as Lindley Murray's old English reader used to call them; but the reader is here introduced to good company, and filled with pure thoughts and high aspirations by the influence exhaling from its pages. RECREATIONS. "THE first work of a child is play," said the great teacher, Frederick Froebel. One may apply to ST. NICHOLAS that line of the poet Campbell, in which the old man, teaching little Gertrude, is said to have been "The playmate ere the teacher of her mind.” He who will lead children rightly must know how to win and hold a child's sympathy by entering into his play, and this ST. NICHOLAS has done in many ways. There have been papers on home amusement that have saved hundreds of boys and girls from dull times on rainy days and winter evenings. The riddles, the puzzles, the acrostics, the rebuses, the charades, the what-nots of elaborate entanglement that have called forth the ingenuity of puzzle-makers, old as well as young, have diffused an aggregate amount of pleasure very gratifying THE LITTLE KINDERGARTEN GIRL. think of. Some of these puzzles have made an immense furore, becoming a matter of national enthusiasm among the children. These were generally puzzles of the [FROM "ST. NICHOLAS," VOL. VIII.] class that have a deep-laid snare for instruction hidden below, and the solving of them has tended directly to the improvement of the reader. The "Race of the Pilots" in the centennial year, divided the attention of the boys and girls with the Philadelphia exhibition, and thousands searched the cyclopedias and histories to make out the fifteen distinguished men who were represented by fifteen pilot-boats. Over two thousand answers to this difficult puzzle were received, in which the knowledge, industry, penmanship and spelling of the young contestants were tested to the utmost—and many thousands, no doubt, who sent no answer, were yet set to seeking after the names and the history of the men. More than one thousand answers were correct, and the names of children who sent these were printed. The lad whose an swer was best in all respects received a beautiful sailing-yacht, the "St. Nicholas," about four feet long, of the most perfect proportions and ingenious construction. This was followed by "The Declaration of Independence," a remarkable test of skill and painstaking. Twenty prizes, appropriate to the subject and the centennial year, were offered, and about ten thousand answers came in the names of eleven hundred answers were printed for the excellence of their work. There was no puzzle about it; it was simply a test of skill in copying the document that marks the initial point of the history of our country as an independent nation. How many hours of practice in writing, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation were secured in this way! Lessons in patience, lessons in patriotism, and lessons in history were communicated "without pain," as the dentists say. Omitting mention of many other puzzles, there was the ingenious "Historic Pi," announced in December, 1881, which brought answers from twenty-seven hundred and fifty children. These answers involved an untold amount of book-searching and historic rummaging. Now, this is teaching on the highest principles known to educators. "Never tell a child what you can make him find out for himself," says a great master-teacher; and the "historic pi" set thousands of children at the most healthful educative work of discovering, tried with their own faculties. "Educate the hand, teach a child to do," said Pestalozzi, the great educator. And the writing out of elaborate answers to these puzzles, together with the "Letter-Box," and the little directions for making and doing things in every number, are training many thousand flexible young hands to dexterity, and are training thousands of brains through the hand to attention and thought. On the side of playful sympathy with the spirit and pursuits of young people, there are the descriptions of home amusements of various kinds, that have brought many happy hours to the family circle; there are papers on open-air pursuits, and the never-to-beforgotten Jingles. It took centuries to produce the classic Mother Goose Melodies. No one knows from how far back in antiquity the cow that jumped over the moon and the little dog that laughed have come down to us. They may have had their .ude startingpoint in the tents of our most great-greatgrandfather in the Aryan highlands, wherever those highlands may be. The old woman at Banbury Cross is a heritage of the ages, and it seemed before ST. NICHOLAS came into the field that there were to be few additions to nursery poetry; for America had been able to make but one or two well-authenticated nursery rhymes in two centuries and a half. The "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree-top" is clearly suggested by the Indian way of boarding out their babies. There was no other American Mother Goose melody, unless we count Mary's Poor Little Lamb. But now, the "Three Wisc Old Women" of ST. NICHOLAS are as well established in popular favor as the old woman in Mother Goose that went to sleep in the king's highway; while Mrs. Dodge's rhymes and poems for little folk have become household words in England and America. Central Park, the "Horse Hotel" in Third venue, the telephone, the audiphone, the minting of money, the foretelling of the STARTING AN AMATEUR PAPER." What shall we call it?" [FROM "ST. NICHOLAS," VOL. IX.] What shall we say of the out-door papers? There are accounts of how to camp out, how to build toy sail-boats, admirable articles on swimming, on lawn tennis, on the bicycle, and many more on subjects of prime importance to boys and girls. TIMELY ARTICLES. WHATEVER subject comes up, ST. NICHOLAS tries to give its young readers a good understanding of it while it is fresh in people's minds. Life-saving on the coast, the work of coast-wreckers in saving and securing ships and cargoes that have gone ashore, the use of light-houses and light-ships, cable-tele weather, the electric light, the subject of pottery, the siege of Paris, the young Prince Imperial, the "Noble Life" of James A. Garfield, the method of towing by rail in San Francisco, the elevated railroads, the obelisk, ostrich farming, the transit of Venus, men and animal shows, and the baby elephant, are examples of many papers that have been printed on subjects of immediate interest at the time. The reader will see how much of valuable information of a scientific and practical character has been conveyed in articles about which the children's curiosity has been temporarily excited. A " THE MAN-FRIDAY" CATAMARAN. [FROM ST. NICHOLAS, VOL. VIII] graphy, the method of stopping cars by a vacuum-brake, the management of the city fire department, the use of turret ships and torpedoes in war, the Centennial Exhibition when it was as fresh as it is now stale, the ARTICLES ABOUT CHILDREN. CHILDREN are interested in children. ST. NICHOLAS avails itself of this principle to amuse them and to attract their attention to A CIRCUS-WAGON IN THE PROCESSION THROUGH THE STREETS, BEFORE THE SHOW. [FROM "ST. NICHOLAS," VOL. IX.] many important subjects. There, for example, is the article away back in Volume III., on The Poor Boy's Astor House, and the one in Volume V., on Parisian children, and the later one on the English factory children or "halftimers"; the article on that curious institution at the Wilson Mission House, called "The Kitchen Garden"; the one entitled "The Practical Fairy," in which the life of stagechildren is portrayed; the account of the swiftrunning district telegraph boys of the great cities; the description of the summer-home for poor children at Bath, Long Island, and of the benevolent work of Mr. Parsons and the country people in giving, every year, two weeks of country rest to a large number of sick children; and other papers of the same kind. Then there have been some very wholesome articles on matters of great consequence to children. For a single example, take the handling of the subject of school-luncheons, in which the character of the food carried to school by children was first drawn out by the inquiries of the magazine, which brought replies describing the cake, candy, pickles, and knickknacks that children carry to school. The whole matter of healthy food for the luncheon-basket was carefully discussed and the most practical suggestions made. SERIAL STORIES. "MEN and women are all children when they are reading stories," said a well-known editor, once. The staple of a young people's magazine must always be articles of a narrative kind; and, indeed, every sort of juvenile literature tends to take on a narrative form. The stories of ST. NICHOLAS, long ones and short ones, are too widely known to require any description here. They have taken the widest range, and appealed to the most diverse tastes, but they have never been of the hot, unhealthy sort-the sort that tends to produce a harvest of renegades, highwaymen and pirates. Upon this point Mrs. Dodge, the Editor of ST. NICHOLAS, once wrote these strong and true words: "The mayor of Philadelphia says that he could rid the jails of two-thirds of the boy-criminals in the next year, if he could banish bad plays from the boards of the variety theaters, and put bad books out of print. "Now, it will not do to take fascinating bad literature out of 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 blood and sinew of real life in it,-heartsome, pleasant reading, that will waken them to a closer observation of the best things about them. "It is right and natural for a boy to want to see the world. It is right and natural for him to wish to read books that, according to his light, show him what the world is. "The evil is the impression given to young minds that seeing the world means seeing the badness of the world. 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. "Vile writers and worse publishers are fattening on this tendency of boys, and the culpable carelessness of parents in not helping them to satisfy it properly. "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." It has been the special aim of ST. NICHOLAS from the start to supplant the poison trashthe deadly nightshade of the news-standswith stories of a living and healthful interest, uncontaminated and fresh as the open air of heaven. There have been among the serials in the pages of ST. NICHOLAS such stories of home life and young life as Miss Alcott's "Eight Cousins," Under the Lilacs," and "Jack and Jill," and Mrs. 66 Dodge's "Donald and Dorothy"; such stories of breezy adventure and boyish life as Trowbridge's "Fast Friends," "The Young Surveyor," and "His Own Master"; such pictures of frontier life and base-ball adventure as Noah Brooks's "The Boy Emigants" and "The Fairport Nine"; such tales of remote lands as Bayaid Taylor's "Jon of Iceland"; such stories of unexpected humor as Frank R. Stockton's "A Jolly Fellowship," and "What Might Have Been Expected," in which class Rossiter Johnson's "Phaeton Rogers" is also to be accounted. Time would fail us to characterize the other favorites, such as "Eyebright," by Susan Coolidge, "Rumpty Budget's Tower," by Julian Hawthorne, "The Cat and the Countess," translated by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Nimpo's Troubles," by Olive Thorne Miller, "Pattikin's House," by Joy Allison, "The Peterkin Papers," by Lucretia P. Hale; Wilthe Lakes," and "Saltillo Boys"; Edwin liam O. Stoddard's "Dab Kinzer," "Among Hodder's Drifted into Port," Gustavus Frankenstein's "Tower Mountain," Katherine D. Smith's "Half-a-dozen Housekeepers," F. Blake Crofton's "The Major's Big Talk Stories," Dr. Oswald's "In Nature's Wonderland," Harry T. Kieffer's vivid and historically valuable "Recollections of a Drummer-Boy," and Edward Eggleston's "Hoosier School-boy." This certainly is an imposing array for a single periodical. Many of the ST. NICHOLAS stories have passed into juvenile literature as never-to-be-forgotten classics. It is not too much to say that almost every notable young people's story produced in America now first seeks the light in the pages of ST. NICHOLAS. |