Boys, What Are You Reading?

That princa of good íellows, Robert J. Burdette, says: No, oh no; we re not going to pitch iuto the tive cent blood and thunder Dovelette; not right directly, at any rate. We wera just looking over a story in the June numöer of a most excellent and highly respectable juvenile magazine; a good magazine, tbat doubtless views with alarm, as do all the rest of us. the poisonous literatura of the nows gland. This story is about a boy, 15 years old, who, while standing alone on hii fatlier' engine on a lonely siding, saw a runaway train of cars, started by the wind, sweep past him down the grade. Usual thing- the lightning exprejs nearly duc; the train dispatcher always manages to have a lightning express about due when anything of thm kind happens. There is "no telegrapb wire either;" this is also usual; a road without a wire is apt to run lightning expresses and limited trains every fif teen minutes. The boy thinksquickly; boys of iiftcen are always quick thinkers; he runs his engine out on the ruain line, setting the switches for himself, for his father has gono to supper, miles away in the country, presumably, as it is quite customary for railway engineers to take all their meals at distant ranches, leaving their engine in the charge of children. The runaway cars "are miles away;" and he has "loss than an hour" to catch them. Ue caught the runaways, which were flying like the wind; he slowed up "with great judgment" - we should think so- "crept along the side of his flying engine, pot on the pilot. lifted the coupliag bar "with one hand" and reached over a3 he "made the coupling and dropped the pin in with the other;" had a struggle with the flying cars, but at last checked them; got them started back, he making thirty-five miles an hour and the "Lightning" in sight making sixty - on a road without a wire - he had ten miles to run in this shape, but he made it, got in on the siding, timo to turn the switch, and the "Lightning" thundered by. Then "the boy fainted dead away." Ko wonder; it was enough to make a man fa nt to read it; it was high time somebody fainted. Now the question is just this: does the boy get anything better out of such nonsense than he does out of "Kid the Sleuth Uound, or "The Boy Terror of Gory Canon." Between ourselves and the comraa we really b'nd "The Boy Terror" quite as easy to believe and much more interestin reading. We haven't tho least objection to tiction; we rather like it, but great Mcott! oven iiction for boys should nave ■ome sense in it Kot much, perhaps, but just some.