The Young Bank Messenger Part 60

"Yes."

"Is he alive? Is he well?"

"Yes."

"Will you bring him here? Will you let me see him before I die?"

"I will. I cannot refuse the request of a dying man."

So Ernest brought Frank to the bedside of his dying uncle. It was a sad interview. Frank was moved, but John Fox, seeing him strong, handsome, robust, felt comforted.

"He at least has profited by the fate that overtook his father and myself. I shall die content, for I leave him in good hands. Don't let him think too hardly of us!"

"I will not. And so far as I can compa.s.s it, his future life shall be happy."

The dying outlaw reached out his hand and pressed Ernest's gratefully.

A day later, and he was dead.

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.'S POPULAR JUVENILES.

L. T. TROWBRIDGE.

Neither as a writer does he stand apart from the great currents of life and select some exceptional phase or odd combination of circ.u.mstances. He stands on the common level and appeals to the universal heart, and all that he suggests or achieves is on the plane and in the line of march of the great body of humanity.

The Jack Hazard series of stories, published in the late _Our Young Folks_, and continued in the first volume of _St. Nicholas_, under the t.i.tle of "Fast Friends," is no doubt destined to hold a high place in this cla.s.s of literature. The delight of the boys in them (and of their seniors, too) is well founded. They go to the right spot every time. Trowbridge knows the heart of a boy like a book, and the heart of a man, too, and he has laid them both open in these books in a most successful manner. Apart from the qualities that render the series so attractive to all young readers, they have great value on account of their portraitures of American country life and character. The drawing is wonderfully accurate, and as spirited as it is true. The constable, Sellick, is an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. d.i.n.k's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself p.r.o.nounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his lesson in school.

On the whole, these books are very satisfactory, and afford the critical reader the rare pleasure of the works that are just adequate, that easily fulfill themselves and accomplish all they set out to do.

_--Scribner's Monthly._