of "converted children who teach their parents, and converted convicts who teach honest men," and these two classes form valuable ingredients in Sunday-school literature. The theological arguments of the "Elsie" books would be infinitely diverting if they were not so infinitely acrimonious. One of them, however, is such a masterpiece of feminine pleading that its absurdity must win forgiveness for its unkindness. A young girl, having entered the church of Rome, is told with confidence that her hierarchy is spoken of in the seventeenth chapter of Revelations as "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." "But how do you know," she asks, not unnaturally, "that my church is meant by these lines?"
"'Because,' is the triumphant and unassailable reply, 'she and she alone answers to the description?'"
This I consider the finest piece of reasoning that even Sunday-school books have ever yielded me. It is simply perfect; but there are other passages equally objectionable, and a little less amusing. In one of the stories, Captain Raymond undertakes to convert a
