St. Nicholas for 1915

As for the older boys who read ST. NICHOLASthe new volume will offer them so many attractive features that only a few of them can be mentioned here. One of the best is a serial which a boy who has read it describes as "a rattling good adventure yarn," with the alluring title of

Chained Lightning

by

Ralph Graham Taber

author of many short stories and poems in leading periodicals, and of a series of arctic tales entitled "Northern Lights and Shadows."

"Chained Lightning" contains a wealth of exciting incidents and happenings, as well as of beautiful description. It narrates the adventures (and real adventures they are!) of two American boys who are telegraphers at lonely stations on a western railway, and who resolve to go to Mexico in search of a less humdrum life and incidentally of a gold mine. But it is no mere travelogue, for its chronicles are as vivid as a moving-picture show, and in the main are based on fact. The author, when scarcely more than a boy, became a telegraph operator, went to Mexico and worked on the construction of the Mexican Central Railway, and thence up the route which the story describes to Acapulco. Many of the other characters were drawn from life.

For the pluck and luck of these boys in the Mexican wonderland, "Chained Lightning" is a fitting title. And the way in which the chapters are strung together-by a wire of electric terms, so to speak-will appeal to all boys of a mechanical turn of mind or who are interested in electricity. For instance:

Enclosed find check to cover the subscription price of ST. NICHOLAS for one year. We have been subscribers to ST. NICHOLAS for eight years at least. It is a household necessity to old and young alike.

Its stories are clean, healthy, strong, helpful, and true to the best ideals of manhood and womanhood. The money invested in these years I have counted as a gilt edge investment for my girls. We do not want to miss a number.

As a minister it helps me to keep in touch with the young people in the most wholesome way. I have recommended it to a number of families. Yours for the success of old ST. NICHOLAS, Rev.

St. Nicholas for 1915

The new volume will make an especial feature

too of

Practical

Mechanics for Boys

in fact the pages devoted to this subject will virtually mean a new department for the magazine. The countless things that boys can do and make will receive more attention than ever before, both in the way of special articles and of numerous brief items with photographs and explanatory diagrams.

But "doing things" and playing games are not all there is of life, and the devotion to art and literature which has made ST. NICHOLAS, from the first, a welcome and beloved guest in thousands of homes and schools will be maintained and advanced in the issues for the coming year.

Books and Reading

so ably conducted by Miss Hildegarde Hawthorne, will present, during the winter, a series of articles, in Miss Hawthorne's most appreciative style, concerning the great writers of recent times who have established, and will always hold, an imperishable claim upon the interest and affection of young readers. Three articles of this series,

Andrew Lang, Collector of Fairy Tales-Robert Louis Stevenson, the Great Imaginer and the Author of "The Swiss Family Robinson,"

have already appeared in the August, September, and October numbers. Other sketches soon to follow will be:

Eugene Field, Lover of Childhood-Mark Twain and the Immortal TomRudyard Kipling, Worker of Magic-Joel Chandler Harris, Who Knew Uncle Remus-Charles Kingsley and the Golden Age of England-Howard Pyle, and his Heroes and Pirates-and Louisa M. Alcott, the Best-Beloved.

And in the field of biography, besides the important sketches of Beethoven and Pasteur, the series of brief stories represented by the article in the October number, on "The Tomboy of Bordeaux" (Rosa Bonheur), will be continued by several other charming and beautiful illustrated biographical stories.

For special get-acquainted offer, see next page.