A LITTLE COUNTRY GIRL. By SUSAN COOLIDGE, author of "The New Year's Bargain," "What Katy Did," etc. With illustrations. 16mo, cloth. Price, $1.50. This volume will be welcomed as the first continuous story produced by its author since the publication of "A Guernsey Lily," in 180. The scene is laid in Newport, a place so full of fascinations for the young that it is matter of wonder that it has not before now been chosen by some of our writers as the framework for a juvenile fiction; but, so far as we know, it has been reserved for MISS COOLIDGE to make the experiment. SUGAR AND SPICE, AND ALL THAT'S NICE. A collection of Nursery Rhymes and Jingles selected by the editor of "Quiet Hours." Fully illustrated. Square 12mo, cloth, gilt. Price, $1.25. NATURE'S TEACHINGS. Human invention anticipated by Nature. By Rev. J. G. WOOD, M. A., author of Homes without Hands," Natural History," etc. With nearly 750 illustrations. 8vo, cloth. Price, $3.00. "A glance at almost any page of this work will denote its object. It is to show the close connection between Nature and human inventions, and that there is scarcely an invention of man that has not its prototype in Nature; and it is worthy of notice that the greatest results have been obtained from means apparently the most insignificant."Preface. THE ALCOTT CALENDAR FOR 1886. Containing a selection for every day in the year, culled from the writings of the author of Little Women," mounted on a card illustrated with a portrait of Miss ALCOTT, and a view of her residence in Concord. Price, $1.00. CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. PORTRAIT (detached): Ralph Waldo Emerson, ANNOUNCEMENT, 59. EDITORIAL: Haggling or One-Price? 59. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Ralph Waldo Emerson, 60. POETRY: The Interpreters, 61. REVIEWS: William Lloyd Garrison, 62. Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 63. The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, 65. The Lady With the Rubies, 67. PAGES FROM THE BOOKS: The Pentateuch, 67. NOTES, 70. NEW BOOKS AND THEIR PRICES, 71 ADVERTISERS. American Lead Pencil Company, 86. D. Appleton and Company, 57. A. C. Armstrong and Son, 82. Alonzo Brown, 77. George H. Buchanan and Company, 58, 78. Z. Crane, Jr., and Brother. 77. Dodd, Mead and Company, 54. Funk and Wagnalls, 86. D. W. Glass and Company, 84. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 57. Ivison, Blakeman. Taylor and Company, 87. J. B. Lippincott Company, 78. George Routledge and Sons, 85. Josepha Schrakamp, 77. J. L. Smith, 86. Ticknor and Company, 88. Marcus Ward and Company, 85. John Wiley and Sons, 79. BOOK NEWS is published monthly at 25 cents a year, post-paid. The rates for advertising are as follows: One Year: one page, $120.00; one-half page, $60.00; one-fourth page, $30.00; one-eighth page, $15.00. Less than one year, each insertion (double for Holiday issue): one page $14.00; one half page, $7.00; one-fourth page, $3.50; one-eighth page, $1.75. The edition for this month is 9,000. JOHN WANAMAKER, Book, Department. PHILADELPHIA. Mrs. Cleaveland's poem, NO SECT IN HEAVEN, beautifully printed, in covers of hand-made paper of a hundred years ago. The handsomest edition ever issued of this favorite poem. Price, 25 cents. Sold by booksellers, and mailed on receipt of price by the publishers, GEORGE H. BUCHANAN & CO., 420 Library St., Philadelphia. VOLUME 4. PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER, 1885. ANNOUNCEMENT. As formerly, BOOK NEWS for December and January will be combined in one issue, and devoted to Holiday books, the usual portrait and biographical sketch being omitted. It will be profusely illustrated with pictures from many of the notable books of the season, and will contain articles descriptive of the books represented. A full price-list of new gift books for Grown folks and for Boys and Girls will be given. Twelve thousand copies will be printed, the price will be five cents a copy, and the rates of advertising will be double. HAGGLING OR ONE-PRICE? Doubtless most of our readers have more or less of a personal knowledge of the custom of allowing discounts in retail bookselling. To the public it appears as an old, firmly established, and once universal method, still adhered to by most of the leading bookstores, though probably it is not so generally known to have ramified from its former well-marked lines into various new directions. While preachers, teachers, and libraries were among its first beneficiaries, and are still classed with the most favored recipients of the supposed bounty, the practice has been gradually extended for one or another reason, obvious to those versed in details of business, but confusing and mysterious to the uninitiated. Its general condition is now such that its capacity for expansion is limited only by the attitude of the public towards it. That is to say, it is open to all who will or can accept the terms of using it, and the greatness of its possibilities should be well understood by all buyers with a taste for the exercise of shrewdness and sharpness in driving a bargain. How many plain buyers, who are neither preachers, teachers, purchasers for libraries, nor large buyers needing to be propitiated, realize that a little sacrifice of time combined with shrewd dealing will result in large reductions from the price originally asked for the book? It is nevertheless true that if, after estimating the lowest price at which the book NUMBER 39. may fairly be sold, (usually from twenty per cent. to thirty per cent. less than the published price,) they should put on a bold front and resolutely offer to buy the book at the so-called " reduction," giving the seller the option of making or losing the sale at the lower price, they would not, in the majority of cases, be refused. Do not such practices bear a strong resemblance to those of peddlers and old clo' dealers, who name an inordinately high price at the beginning of the bargain, with the expectation of being beaten down? The suggestion of humbug must surely be too strong for the approval of the respectable and self-respecting portion of the community. If it be argued, however, that these methods, though cumbersome and even questionable, yet are found by experience to be necessary to the prosperity of book-dealing, we beg leave to offer an emphatic denial. Favors and haggling are no more required in selling books than in any other branch of business. Three years ago, in the first year of Book NEWS, the change from the old ways to the one-price system was thoroughly discussed editorially in these columns. At that time, the one-price system was new in bookselling, and hardly more than fairly established on its theoretical merits. Such radical innovators as John Wanamaker, who had dared to strike out boldly from the paths laid out for them by publishers, were denounced unsparingly, and war was declared against them in many quarters. But "nothing succeeds better than success," and the unqualified success of the new methods has had a wonderfully pacifying and instructive influence on all belligerents, and the new way is now admitted to be legitimate and moreover friendly to the best interests of the book business. For, while the decline in the prosperity of bookselling almost everywhere has continued to be marked and alarming, and is conceded to be independent of the general causes of depression in trade, this decline has been in strong contrast with success where the one-price system prevails. The inference is obvious that book-buyers prefer to go where they need not haggle or accept favors. The shortsightedness of the Bourbons of the book trade is the more difficult to understand, as we should look rather for an intelligence above the average of business generally, where there are so many opportunities of contact with the highest intelligence of the day. A few dealers, we more than suspect, while outwardly firm in their adherence to antiquated authority, have learned to confess inwardly "I see the right and I approve it too, Abhor the wrong and still the wrong pursue." A step farther, and the courage to act according to their convictions, and to throw off the chains of tradition, would help to bring bookselling up to the level of other branches of mercantile life. Then, with the general advance in mercantile activity, hopefully looked for during the coming season, there would be less heard, we believe, of the complaint that the retail business of books is a declining one. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803. His father, William Emerson, was pastor of the First (Unitarian) Church in that city, and his grandfather also was a preacher. In his eighth year, on the death of his father, he was sent to the Grammar School, and was fitted for college at the Boston Latin School. He entered Harvard College in 1817, in his fifteenth year, and was graduated in 1821, having had among his instructors Edward Everett, George Ticknor, and Caleb Cushing. He was not at all distinguished as a student, though he succeeded in carrying off prizes for dissertations and declamation, and was noted as a frequenter of the library and for knowledge of general literature. He was also the poet of his class on class-day. The five years following his graduation were spent in teaching school. As it was expected that Emerson would follow the family tendency to preaching, he studied. divinity, chiefly under Channing, and was "approbated to preach," in 1826, by the Middlesex Association of Ministers; but, owing to general debility, he did not enter upon public work for some time. In March, 1829, he was ordained as colleague of Henry Ware, at the Second (Unitarian) Church of Boston, and in a year's time became sole pastor. This kind of labor, however, does not appear to have been quite congenial; and as his peculiar cast of mind led him to entertain and express grave doubts as to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper being a permanent institution, or of any value to any one in these latter days, he first brought the subject before his congregation, and urged substitution of some other rite of commemoration; and when the people, to a man, refused to adopt his views, he quietly resigned in 1832, and retired from any further connection with public preaching. Thenceforward he turned his attention largely to giving lectures, and writing in both poetry and prose. He traveled in Italy, France, and England, for a year. While in England he visited Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle, with the last of whom he formed a close friendship despite Carlyle's cynicism and fixed habit of abusing his fellow-men, which was in marked contrast with his own tolerant and fair-minded temper. On Emerson's return home, in the winter of 1833-34, he began his career as a public lecturer in the Boston Mechanics' Institute, taking Water as his first subject. Three others followed, two on Italy, and the last on The Relation of Man to the Globe. In 1834, he delivered a series of biographical lectures on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Burke, the first two of which were afterward published in the North American Review. In the same year, also, he read a poem at Cambridge before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The year following he was married for the second time—his first wife having died of consumption in 1832-and took up his residence in the "Old Manse," in the quiet little village of Concord, twenty miles from Boston. He continued to make his home in Concord until his death. From this time onward, for some thirty to forty years, Emerson continued to give courses of lectures, year after year, on such topics as English Literature, The Philosophy of History, Human Culture, Human Life, The Present Age, The Times, etc. These lectures were delivered in all parts of the United States, and he always secured good attendance. In 1848, on a second visit to Europe, he lectured in England and Scotland. He was well received, and had large audiences. One further visit was made to the Old World in 1872, when he was accompanied by his daughter, and renewed the intercourse of twenty years before with Carlyle and other friends and admirers in England. Subsequent to this there are few events in Emerson's life on record. March 30, 1878, he spoke in the Old South Church, on The Fortune of the Republic, and in 1880 gave his hundredth lecture before the Concord Lyceum, on New England Life and Letters. Emerson died at his residence, in Concord, on the evening of April 27, 1882, without a stain upon his character as a man and a citizen, and esteemed by all his neighbors and those who knew him best in these relations. In other respects, however, looked at as a philosopher, a guide, a poet, it is somewhat difficult to estimate aright his true position and rank. Some are as extravagant in laudation as others are in contempt and scorn. Doubtless both extremes are to be avoided, and a fairer estimate sought somewhere between them. On Annual Cyclopædia. The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson are published in various editions, of which the Little Classic, 18mo, and the New Riverside, 12mo, are the most desirable. |