(Pall Mall Gazette, March 27, 1885.)

This spring the little singers are out before the little sparrows and
have already begun chirruping. Here are four volumes already, and who
knows how many more will be given to us before the laburnums blossom? The
best-bound volume must, of course, have precedence. It is called Echoes
of Memory, by Atherton Furlong, and is cased in creamy vellum and tied
with ribbons of yellow silk. Mr. Furlong's charm is the unsullied
sweetness of his simplicity. Indeed, we can strongly recommend to the
School-Board the Lines on the Old Town Pump as eminently suitable for
recitation by children. Such a verse, for instance, as:

I hear the little children say
(For the tale will never die)
How the old pump flowed both night and day
When the brooks and the wells ran dry,

has all the ring of Macaulay in it, and is a form of poetry which cannot
possibly harm anybody, even if translated into French. Any inaccurate
ideas of the laws of nature which the children might get from the passage
in question could easily be corrected afterwards by a lecture on
Hydrostatics. The poem, however, which gives us most pleasure is the one
called The Dear Old Knocker on the Door. It is appropriately illustrated
by Mr. Tristram Ellis. We quote the concluding verses of the first and
last stanzas:

Blithe voices then so dear
Send up their shouts once more,
Then sounds again on mem'ry's ear
The dear old knocker on the door.