The Oroville Weekly Gazette

BY ALICE LINDSEY WEBB

(Questions gladly answered. Write me in care of the editor.)

Theodore Parker says in his "World of Matter and World of Men": The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker-it is a ship of thought deep and freighted with truth, with beauty, too."

The schools are open again for the winter, and there are the usual long lists of little boys and girls who are unhappy and humiliated because they did not do well enough to go on to the next grade. The parents have in many cases pleaded, bribed, scolded, punished, or even paid some one to tutor the poor little delinquent during vacation. And the teachers have tried both sarcasm and kindness, the dunce cap's ignominy and hours after school. It will all have to be done over again --and over and over--poor things. That is, unless the teachers and parents get together on the basis of such work as Dr. William R. P. Emerson has been doing for some years, of which he tells in his most helpful new volume on "Nutrition and Growth in Children" (Appleton. $2.50.) All his experience as visiting physician for the children's out-patient department of the Massachusetts General Hospital, in charge of the nutrition clinic; as medical adviser for the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial fund, Chicago; as president of the Nutrition Clinic for Delicate Children, incorporated; and as professor of pediatrics at Tufts College-- leads him to believe the chief cause of the troubles of these poor little school children is malnutrition, caused by five things: Physical defects, especially in the nose and throat. Lack of home control; Overfatigue; Improper diet and faulty food habits and faulty health habits.

"The requisites for good health in the growing child are few." he says-- good air, simple food, rest and the proper exercise. If the causes of malnutrition are removed, and these simple requisites for growth obtained, we have what may be called the essentials of health."

Dr. Emerson analyses the situation in American homes and schools, telling why these things have been so largely overlooked, showing what has been done through school and home and hospital, and illustrating by charts and "before and after" photographs of children treated, the remarkable results to be obtained by proper attention to the five points given above. It is a book to bring new hope to worried parents, new light to puzzled and distracted teachers, new life to the children who need this particular sort of attention. I wish every Parent-Teacher's Association in this United States could get the book and read it: then see that there is a copy in every school and library. Dr. Emerson writes of a Community Campaign, of which I will tell you another day.

"I can scarcely wait to read "Robin", the sequel, appearing this fall, to Frances Hodgson Burnett's fine novel "The Head of the House of Coombe." (Frederick Stokes. $2). Robin is the lonely, unloved but wholly lovely little daughter of a beautiful, heartless, selfish and luxury-loving woman in fashionable London. Because of the strange resemblance to the dead love of his youth, Lord Coombe gives her the protection of his wealth and stability-without marriage-when her house of cards goes to pieces, and assumes the unofficial guardianship of Robin. All this is background to the development of that remarkable isolated small person into the very lovely young thing who, at sixteen, renews a childhood love affair with Donal Muir, Lord Coombe's heir. The end of the book leaves them waltzing ecstatically together at her first party-and the great war about to burst on their heads. Do you wonder that I am impatient for the publisher to send me the book which will complete the tale?

Pirates and murder; love and revenge and horror; and this sort of song:

"There be two at the fore,
At the main hang three more;
Dead men that swing all in a row.
Here's fine, dainty meat
For the fishes to eat,
Black Bartlemy-Bartlemy. ho."

These you will find in Jeffrey Farnol's novel, "Martin Conisby's Vengeance" (Little, Brown, $2.) which he has dedicated to the two gentle aunts. My father sat up until after 2 in the morning reading it, and mother had to get up and put the light out before he would go to bed. I gave it to a college lad to read on a steamer journey and so he fell in love with one of the desperate characters-a dainty little Spanish spit-fire of a girl pirate-that he refused to read the last fifteen chapters after her death, declaring "She was a dandy. The author had no right to kill her there." If your religion teaches that the horrors of the Spanish inquisition were justified, you had best not read those fifteen last chapters yourself. The book is a real thriller and a sort of sequel to "Black Bartlemy's Treasure." Other of Farnol's novels of adventure are "Beltane the Smith" "The Amateur Gentleman" "The Honorable Mr. Tawnish". "The Broad Highway", "The Definite Object" "Our Admirable Betty", and "The Geste of Duke Jocelyn."

Do you know "Sube Cane?" He is the same sort of all-boy person as Tarkington's "Penrod" and Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" -just a real, live youngster full of interests and excitement and ripe for adventure. Edward Bellamy Partridge is responsible for him. One wonders if he, in his youth, was not also responsible ... [continuing with descriptions of Sube Cane, Tale of Nimble Deer, Assets of the Ideal City, Outwitting Our Nerves, and extensive list of new books including The Love Story of Aliette Brunton, The Blue Circle, The Round to the World, The Story of Drugs, The Truth About Vignolles, More Jataka Tales, The New Latin America, Everyday Uses of English, Principles of the New Economics, The Sky Line of Spruce, The Breath of Scandal, The Captive, Granite and Clay, The Rider of Golden Bar, All the Way by Water, Lamp-Light Tales, Judith of the Godless Valley, Shoes of the Wind, The Wings of Time, Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, The Trail of the White Mule, How to Get What You Want]