A book rather out of the ordinary is this “Spirit of the Border.”  The main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian missionaries in the Ohio Valley.  Incidentally the reader is given details of the frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the wilderness for the planting of this great nation.  Chief among these, as a matter of course, is Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and at the same time the most admirable of all the brave men who spent their lives battling with the savage foe, that others might dwell in comparative security.

Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian “Village of Peace” are given at some length, and with minute description.  The efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have been before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders of the several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be of interest to the student.

By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid word-pictures of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings of the beauties of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.

It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by it, perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly braved every privation and danger that the westward progress of the star of empire might be the more certain and rapid.  A love story, simple and tender, runs through the book.

CAPTAIN BRAND, OF THE SCHOONER CENTIPEDE.  By Lieut.  Henry A. Wise, U.S.N. (Harry Gringo).  Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis.  Price, $1.00.

The re-publication of this story will please those lovers of sea yarns who delight in so much of the salty flavor of the ocean as can come through the medium of a printed page, for never has a story of the sea and those “who go down in ships” been written by one more familiar with the scenes depicted.

The one book of this gifted author which is best remembered, and which will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is “Captain Brand,” who, as the author states on his title page, was a “pirate of eminence in the West Indies.”  As a sea story pure and simple, “Captain Brand” has never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual embellishments of blood and thunder, it has no equal.

NICK OF THE WOODS.  A story of the Early Settlers of Kentucky.  By Robert Montgomery Bird.  Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis.  Price, $1.00.