Old lamps for new

After seeing modern problems vividly dissected, and after the excitement of thrilling adventure stories, it will be positively restful to drop into the cozy lodgings over Bemerton’s second-hand bookstore for a drifting, delightful talk with a man of wide reading, who has travelled in unexpected places, who has an original way of looking at life, and a happy knack of expressing what is seen. There are few books which so perfectly suggest without apparent effort a charmingly natural and real personality.

The author almost succeeds in making the reader believe that he is actually mingling with the people of the story and attending their picnics and parties. Some of them are Dickensian and quaint, some of them splendid types of to-day, but all of them are touched off with sympathy and skill and with that gentle humor in which Mr. Lucas shows the intimate quality, the underlying tender humanity, of his art.

A novel, original and pleasing, whose special charm lies in its happy phrasing of acute observations of life. For the delicacy with which his personalities reveal themselves through their own letters, “the book might be favorably compared,” says the Chicago Tribune, “with much of Jane Austen’s character work”—and the critic proceeds to justify, by quotations, what he admits is high praise indeed.

An anthology of letter writing, so human, interesting, and amusing from first to last, as almost to inspire one to attempt the restoration of a lost art. “We do not believe that a more likable book has been published this year.”—The Evening Post, Chicago.

A more charming book of letters could hardly be desired than Mr. Lucas’s “The Gentlest Art”; his new volume has the same delightful savor of interesting personalities, and is equally likable.

Better than any one else whose name comes to mind, Mr. Lucas has mastered the difficult art of the compiler. There is more individuality in “The Gentlest Art,” for instance, than in the so-called original works of many an author. This happy knack of assembling the best things in the world on a given subject is given free play in the present book, the subject of which is the Eternal Feminine. Here are all the best words of the poets on a theme which surely offers scope for more variety than any other within the view of the reader. Like others of Mr. Lucas’s books, this is attractively bound and decorated.

A companion volume to “The Ladies’ Pageant,” wherein one may meet “soldier and sailor, tinker and tailor,” and all the kinds of men whom it takes to make a most interesting world.

“Mr. Lucas describes London in a style that is always entertaining, surprisingly like Andrew Lang’s, full of unexpected suggestions and points of view, so that one who knows London well will hereafter look on it with changed eyes, and one who has only a bowing acquaintance will feel that he has suddenly become intimate.”—The Nation.

“It is not very easy to point out the merits which make this volume immeasurably superior to nine-tenths of the books of travel that are offered the public from time to time. Perhaps it is to be traced to the fact that Mr. Lucas is an intellectual loiterer, rather than a keen-eyed reporter, eager to catch a train for the next stopping-place. It is also to be found partially in the fact that the author is so much in love with the artistic life of Holland.”—Globe-Democrat, St. Louis.

“It is hard to imagine a pleasanter book of its kind.”—Courier-Journal, Louisville.

“Of all the readers of Charles Lamb who have striven to emulate him, Mr. Lucas comes nearest to being worthy of him. Perhaps it is because it is natural to him to look upon life and letters and all things with something of Lamb’s gentleness, sweetness, and humor.”—The Tribune.

“The informality, intimacy, unaffected humor, of these unpretentious papers make them delightful reading.”—The Outlook.

A book of stories delightfully lighted up with such a whimsical strain of humor as children enjoy.

Mr. Lucas has a unique way of looking at life, of seeing the humor of everyday things, which exactly suits the butterfly fancy of a bright child.

Verses of the seasons, of “little fowls of the air,” and of “the country road”; ballads of sailormen and of battle; songs of the hearthrug, and of the joy of being alive and a child, selected by Mr. Lucas and illustrated in black and white and with colored plates by Mr. F. D. Bedford. The wording of the title is an allusion to the very successful “Book of Verse for Children” issued ten years ago. The Athenæum describes Mr. Lucas as “the ideal editor for such a book as this.”

Or, What Shall We Do Now? A book of suggestions for the employment of young hands and minds, directions for playing many children’s games, etc.