Mary Louise
TO YOUNG READERS You will like Mary Louise because she is so much like yourself. Mrs. Van Dyne has succeeded in finding a very human girl for her heroine; Mary Louise is really not a fiction character at all. Perhaps you know the author through her "Aunt Jane's Nieces" stories; then you don't need to be told that you will want to read all the volumes that will be written about lovable Mary Louise. Mrs. Van Dyne is recognized as one of the most interesting writers for girls to-day. Her success is largely due to the fact that she does not write DOWN to her young readers; she realizes that the girl of to-day does not have to be babied, and that her quick mind is able to appreciate stories that are as well planned and cleverly told as adult fiction. That is the theory behind "The Bluebird Books." If you are the girl who likes books of individuality--wholesome without being tiresome, and full of action without being sensational--then you are just the girl for whom
now, sits in all the good nature of her short, fat figure, serving
her customers with ices, at three cents. Her cunning black eyes and
cheerful, ruddy face, enhance the air of pertness that has made her
a favorite with her customers. We will pass the little wooden shop,
where Mr. Saunders makes boots of the latest style, and where old
lapstone, with curious framed spectacles tied over his bleared eyes,
has for the last forty years been seen at the window trimming welts,
and mending every one's sole but his own; we will pass the four
story wooden house that the landlord never paints-that has the
little square windows, and the little square door, and the two
little iron hand rails that curl so crabbedly at the ends, and guard
four crabbeder steps that give ingress and egress to its swarm of
poor but honest tenants; we will pass the shop where a short,
stylish sign tells us Mr. Robertson makes bedsteads; and the little,
slanting house a line of yellow letters on a square of black tin
tells us is a select school for young ladies, and the bright, dainty
looking house with the green shutters, where lives Mr. Vredenburg
the carpenter, who, the neighbors say, has got up in the world, and
paints his house to show that he feels above poor folks-and find we
have reached the sooty and gin-reeking grocery of Mr. Korner, who
sells the devil's elixir to the sootier devils that swarm the
cellars of his neighbors. The faded blue letters, on a strip of wood
nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us he is a dealer in
"Imported and other liquors." Next door to Mr. Korner's tipsy
looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who has a large
business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs. Downey, a
TO YOUNG READERS You will like Mary Louise because she is so much like yourself. Mrs. Van Dyne has succeeded in finding a very human girl for her heroine; Mary Louise is really not a fiction character at all. Perhaps you know the author through her "Aunt Jane's Nieces" stories; then you don't need to be told that you will want to read all the volumes that will be written about lovable Mary Louise. Mrs. Van Dyne is recognized as one of the most interesting writers for girls to-day. Her success is largely due to the fact that she does not write DOWN to her young readers; she realizes that the girl of to-day does not have to be babied, and that her quick mind is able to appreciate stories that are as well planned and cleverly told as adult fiction. That is the theory behind "The Bluebird Books." If you are the girl who likes books of individuality--wholesome without being tiresome, and full of action without being sensational--then you are just the girl for whom