THE CHRISTMAS NIGHTINGALE: THREE CHRISTMAS STORIES FROM POLAND.

Eric P. Kelly '06, Macmillan,1932.

There is no use pretending that this is an unbiased review. The reviewer was once accused by a stranger of being Polish and the idea of a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee being suspected of anything so colorful and romantic has turned his head completely. Since then, the very mention of Poland has thrown him into a twitter.

In these three stories of Christmas in Poland, however, it is a sure case of "increase of appetite" growing "by what it fed on" for there is the story of how, on Christmas eve, the Nightingale came to the charcoal-burner's hut in the dark Forest of Lubel. There is the story of Antek and Stefan and Christopher and Anusia who played the Szopka Krakawska for the people of Krakow, making "the puppets dance as if they were alive" until "everybody reached for handkerchiefs when King Herod ordered that all the babies in the kingdom should be put to death" and screamed with excitement when the devil danced out and cut off King Herod's head and it went "rolling out of the little theater and onto the floor."

Best of all is the Christmas market with its booths "hung with every imaginable delight: dolls and horns, beads, gold and silver glass, books with huge pictured covers, candied statues of St. Mikolai, the children's friend, sausages in strings, games, real leather shoes, stockings and frocks of the most fascinating colors, lanterns, candles, chocolates, wooden clocks, canes, and a million other things . . where Pan Bielski went to buy a lamp for the little blind girl who could feel the light.

Now, your reviewer does not pretend to be one of those people who can size up a book in a few minutes and say just what ages it will suit but, on mature deliberation, he believes it may be given, safely, to all children between seven and seventy, with special consideration, of course, for precocious ones beyond those years.