TROWBRIDGE.
Neither as a writer does he stand apart from the great currents of life and select some exceptional phase or odd combination of circumstances.
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 title of "Fast Friends," is no doubt destined to hold a high place in this class 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.