N August 21, 1905, Dodged 24905

Mary Mapes Mary Mapes

mer home at Onteora, named from the white blossoms that covered the ground around it, and also in remembrance of Wordsworth's lines, which were over the fireplace,

"Enough if in our hearts we know

There's such a place as Yarrow." Mrs. Dodge is best remembered by her fifty years' old story of Holland, skating, and a prize won by a girl from a family reduced to poverty by an injury to the father, whose mind, asleep for years, was at last restored by an operation. I was once asked to give a book-talk in an outof-town High School, and found grammar grade boys and girls in the audience. was necessary to think quickly how to interest them, and make them feel that they were ready to listen and understand what

It

they heard and I asked them who had read the Hartford Courant of that morning. Some had, and I said "Who remembers seeing a paragraph about a man who ecovered his reason years after an injury to his head?" Several recalled it, and I asked who had ever read of such an incident in a story, and what story it was. The faces began to brighten and several said "Hans Brinker," which at once made a contact between us, and I have no doubt, induced some who did not know the pleasure of reading the book to ask for it at the Town Library.

Mary Mapes Dodge, "M. M. D.," was born into a happy home, with an all-round scientific man, Professor James J. Mapes, for a father, and as she says herself, "a devoted father and mother and a happy childhood." She and her two sisters never went to school, but were taught at home

by tutors and governesses, and learned from their father to love the Bible, old ballads, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, and Sir Walter Scott. She began to write when a young girl, often helping her father in his scientific work, until she married a lawyer, William Dodge, and had a happy life with him and their two boys until he died, and she went back with her sons to her father's house near Newark. Mary Mapes Dodge began again to write to earn money for her boys' education, and her stories and essays were at once accepted by the best magazines. She was writing and reading for "Hans Brinker" eight years, before ever having been in Holland, but she had the advantage of living near two highly educated Hollanders who criticized every chapter for her. The book has been translated into at least four European languages, and received a prize in Paris of 1500 francs.

Before "Hans Brinker" was published, Mrs. Dodge did editorial work on the household and children's departments, of Hearth and Home, a weekly paper, until the directors of the Century Company offered her, in 1873, the editorship of a new magazine for boys and girls, and in November

of that year the first number of St. Nicholas appeared. It absorbed Our Young Folks and the Riverside Magazine, both of a high class, much more modern than some critics are willing to admit, and the contents of the early volumes of St. Nicholas show the names of favorite contributors to those magazines, Lucretia Hale, whose Peterkins are well-known characters after fifty years, J. T. Trowbridge, Lucy

Aby Morton Diaz, Sarah Jewett, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Louisa Alcott, Elisabeth Stuart Phelps, and Marion Douglass, besides John Hay, afterwards Secretary of State, and Frank Stockton, who was to become famous later.

The St. Nicholas is just fifty years old, and for more than thirty years Mrs. Dodge was its editor, always giving boys and girls the very best that she could find or hear of. For example, the earlier Jungle Book stories first appeared in St. Nicholas's hospitable pages. Up to the time of her death some of the best-known writers in the country were the authors of St. Nicholas serials. Since that time, the magazine has had fewer well-known contributors, altho two of the best stories of late years, Mrs. Burnett's "Lost Prince" and Dorothy Canfield's "Understood Betsy," have appeared in it and delighted readers of all ages.

The high standard that Mrs. Dodge set

dren's Book Week and Motion Picture Book Week being developed it seems at this time appropriate to call attention to the permanent value of motion pictures based on the standard children's books. Some of the best selling novels are so ephemeral that by the time the film is ready the story's popularity is already on the decline and at best such films are short lived. On the other hand, only an occasional new children's book comes into sudden popularity-but it is usually a lasting popularity. Thus a really fine film based on one of these classics is assured of a long life of usefulness and the producer is assured of profitable returns over a period of years instead of months. If producers will but make children's films with the idea of creating a lasting and artistic as well as a profitable asset the publishers, booksellers, and children will do their share in supporting both the film and the book.