Page:Points of view (Repplier).djvu/243

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ENGLISH RAILWAY FICTION.
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about Prince George of Wales, and Mrs. Mackay, and the Earl and Countess of Jersey. "Bow Bells" and "The Wide World Novelettes" are on a distinctly lower scale: the fiction more sensational, the cuts coarser, and the pink cover of "Bow Bells" flaunting and vulgar. "A Magazine of Short Stories" aims at being lively and vivacious in the style of Rhoda Broughton, and gives a good pennyworth of tales, verses, Answers to Correspondents, and a column of Familiar Quotations Verified that alone is worth the money. But the final triumph of quantity over quality, of matter over mind, is in the "Book for All," published weekly at the price of one penny, and containing five separate departments, for women, girls, men, boys, and children. Each of these departments has a short illustrated story, poetry, anecdotes, puzzles, confidential talks with the editor, advice on every subject, and information of every description. Here you can learn "how to preserve your beauty" and how to make "royal Battenberg" lace, how to run a Texas ranch and how to go into mourning for your mother, how to cure stammering and how to rid a dog of fleas. Here you may acquire