man-made codes of law. Take a single instance from "The Golden Age":

"From forth the vestry window proceeded two small legs, gyrating; hungry for foothold, with larceny not to say sacrilege-in their very wriggle. I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of biscuits; kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official trappings. For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. There was something in this immoral morning which seemed to say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the biscuits as the Vicar, and would certainly enjoy them better."

This from the staid, and at least conventionally honest, secretary of the Bank of England! And yet where is the banker, however painfully honest he may be, who, with hand upon heart, can say he's sorry he stole apples, or melons, or both, when he was a boy?

One of the cleverest chapters in the book is "A White-washed Uncle." "Uncles," "Uncles," says this boy of larger growth, "were just then a heavy and lifeless market, and there was little inclination to deal." But the children decided to give the

uncle sent on approval from India a full and fair trial. Uncle William failed to stand the test until the very last moment, when, at the station, he happened to think to send each of the "kids” a half-crown, with permission to buy what they liked with it-to "make little beasts of themselves" with the money if they wanted to, the one condition being that they say nothing to their parents about it. Regretting their swift judgment, Edward, the master-mind, suggested that they christen the new pig after him, thus showing their repentance by this token of their respect. But Harold said he had only that morning christened the said pig after the curate who had bowled with him the night before; somehow he felt he "had to do it." The master-mind rose to the situation. “Oh, but that don't count, because we weren't all there. We'll take that christening off, and call it Uncle William, and you can save up the curate for the next litter."

PROA

XX

HAROLD MURDOCK

1862

MINENT among the younger genera

tion of bookmen in Boston is Harold Murdock, vice-president of the National Shawmut Bank, whose reputation as an author was established in 1889, by the publication of "The Reconstruction of Europe; a Sketch of the Diplomatic and Military History of Continental Europe, from the Rise to the Fall of the Second French Empire," with an introduction by John Fiske. The book is still called for by students of European history.

Mr. Murdock's position in the literary world was further strengthened, in 1907, by the publication of "Earl Percy's Dinner-Table-Boston, 1774-5," an imaginative revival of an interesting epoch in New England history. It is a realistic picture of historic Boston at the opening of the Revolution. From the conversation around Earl Percy's hospitable board the reader obtains many vivid word-pictures of interesting characters and events leading down to Lexington and Bunker Hill. A critic describes the book as "a piece of imaginative history of a type that Landor might have been proud to own."

Mr. Murdock's latest book, fresh from the Houghton-Mifflin press, is a series of "Letters written by a Gentleman in Boston to his Friend in Paris describing the Great Fire-with introductory chapters and notes." The work includes a sketch of Boston with all its old landmarks as it was in the year of the Peace Jubilee, followed by a well-told story of the Great Fire in 1872— of which the author himself was an eye-witness. The book with its introductory chapters and notes is a valuable contribution to the history of American cities.