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“Every day we see that there is an absolute necessity for giving good books to our children.  We cannot begin too early to cultivate a taste for healthful literature.  The recent developments in several cities must call the attention of all careless parents to this fact.  The influence of bad books upon children is so apparent as to be startling, and the boy who went armed to school last week in Pittsburg and gave his name to his teacher as ‘Schuykill Jack,’ is only one of a large number of weak-headed boys who have been depraved by reading these stories which they ought never to have seen.  Do not consider it lost or wasted time during which you read to your boy; perhaps no other hours in your life are so wisely used, and it will not be without its fruit, you may be perfectly sure.  Do not always read down to your children:  they appreciate higher and deeper thoughts than you sometimes think they do.”—­New York Evening Post.

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A “School of Library Economy” has just been established in Columbia College, to be opened in October, 1886.  The object includes “all the special training needed to select, buy, arrange, catalogue, index, and administer in the best and most economical way any collection of books, pamphlets, or serials.”  The instruction is to be given by “lectures, reading, the Seminar, visiting libraries, problems, and work.”  We shall watch with interest this new species of technical school.

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LAW IN EASY LESSONS.

“It is manifest that such a manual as Every Man His Own Lawyer would be a snare to the unwary, because it does not content itself with teaching the reader what to avoid, but professes to guide him in the labyrinthian paths of substantive law and technical procedure.  It is equally clear, however, that a rudimentary acquaintance with the main principles of jurisprudence is indispensable to those who purpose to mingle in active life at all, and discharge the most familiar duties of the citizen.  But law books are not inviting to the general reader—­we may imagine, indeed, that Blackstone has rather lost than gained in the esteem of his professional brethren by the attempt to make his commentaries an exception to the rule—­and the volumes may be counted on the fingers which are at once entertaining and trustworthy compends of legal lore.  To the meagre collection of attractive introductions to this subject an addition has recently been made by BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT in a couple of brochures, respectively called The Travelling Law School and Famous Trials, which are published in one volume by D. Lothrop & Co.  The book is ostensibly written for boys, but it may be heartily commended to adult readers of both sexes.  It is surprising how much sound law the author manages to insinuate in the guise of interesting incidents and pleasing anecdotes.  Even they who are sickened by the scent of sheepskin and law calf, and who would as soon think of entering on a course of Calvinistic theology as on a study of jurisprudence, will imbibe through the author’s cheerful narrative a good many useful notions of their legal rights and duties, just as children are persuaded to swallow an aperient in the shape of prunes or figs.