YENSIE WALTON. By Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.
$1.50.
Of the many good books which the Messrs. Lothrop have prepared for the
shelves of Sunday-school libraries, "Yensie Walton" is one of the best.
It is a sweet, pure story of girl life, quiet as the flow of a brook,
and yet of sufficient interest to hold the attention of the most
careless reader. Yensie is an orphan, who has found a home with an
uncle, a farmer, some distance from the city. Her aunt, a coarse, vulgar
woman, and a tyrant in the household, does her best to humiliate her by
making her a domestic drudge, taking away her good clothing and
exchanging it for coarse, ill-filling garments, and scolding her from
morning till night. This treatment develops a spirit of resistance; the
mild and affectionate little girl becomes passionate and disobedient,
and the house is the scene of continual quarrels. Fortunately, her uncle
insists upon her attending school, and in the teacher, Miss Gray, she
finds her first real friend. In making her acquaintance a new life
begins for her. She is brought in contact with new and better
influences, and profiting by them becomes in time a sunbeam in her
uncle's house, and the means of softening the heart and quieting the
tongue of the aunt who was once her terror and dread. Mrs. Clark has a
very pleasing style, and is especially skilful in the construction of
her stories.
"Yensie Walton" is a story of great power, by a new author. It aims to
show that God uses a stern discipline to form the noblest characters,
and that the greatest trials of life often prove the greatest blessings.
The story is subordinate to this moral aim, and the earnestness of the
author breaks out into occasional preaching. But the story is full of
striking incident and scenes of great pathos, with occasional gleams of
humor and fun by way of relief to the more tragic parts of the
narrative. The characters are strongly drawn, and, in general, are
thoroughly human, not gifted with impossible perfections, but having
those infirmities of the flesh which make us all akin.
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