{"product_id":"2940013943940","title":"Dr. Birch And His Young Friends (Illustrated by the Author)","description":"In Thackeray's drawings — and,notably in 'this eBook edition — we are shown the diminutive scapegraces and scaramouches just as he knew them fifty years ago, with wide, questioning eyes and chubby contours, strangely attired in little coats and skirts which know no modern equivalent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 'Dr. Birch and His Young Friends' we have the spectacle of an author, always determined to see sermons in stones, if not good in everything, coping successfully with the difficulties of an unromantic subject. Childhood is pretty when it is kept in the place of childhood, and bears its proper relation to age. There is no lovelier couple than a mother and a child, nothing more pleasant to contemplate than a father's love for his boy. But when children are placed in unnatural situations, they lose all the qualities which induce us to care for them. A boarding-school, however useful for hardening the character, in an age when most have to \"fend for themselves,\" contains of necessity conditions that are quite out of the course of nature. It is there that we see youths with all the exaggerated sense of individuality characteristic of the beginning period of life, aping the conduct, and assuming the attitudes, of middle-aged men. As a result we have there independence without restraint, and selfishness unrelieved by any knowledge of our comparative unimportance to others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoys, moreover, however high an opinion they may have of themselves, are seldom remarkable for self-respect, and they will pay a far higher price than grown-up people for immunity from ill-usage, and for their own personal security. To ingratiate themselves with the powerful, the weak will take sides against the weak. Hence it is that the strong, who are not ashamed to use their strength, are always secure of a servile following, and that, at school, to be unpopular is to lose every friend. These things happen of necessity where both body and spirit are timid and unformed, but they are not pleasant to look back upon, and English authors, writing for an English public, have found them convenient to forget.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor these reasons alone it would be idle to expect that an accurate or serious portrait of school-boy life should ever be drawn, but there are others equally powerful that help to obscure the past, and it is the lot of many to come to look back upon it from the troubles and distress of life as a vague but glorious period, or to suppose that the actions which they but dimly remember were prompted by the same feelings which, in similar circumstances, would have actuated them in manhood or in age. Canon Farrar's 'Eric' is the product of one of these ideas, 'Tom Brown's School-days' of the other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEric is a sentimental impossibility, and Tom Brown is merely an average middle-aged Briton, with a better appetite, and a greater interest in football! \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a field of this kind, Thackeray's triumph with his little comedy is the more unique. He glosses over nothing, and his boys are no older than their years, but the portrait drawn is not repellent, and if while reading it we regret, we also understand, the follies and the vices of our youth. He watches and comments on the little fortunes of his human beings in miniature with a perception which is never at fault, and with a wisdom that is always bland:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome wealth or want, come good or ill,\u003cbr\u003eLet young and old accept their part,\u003cbr\u003eAnd bow before the awful Will,\u003cbr\u003eAnd bear it with an honest heart.\u003cbr\u003eWho misses, or who wins the prize?\u003cbr\u003eGo lose or conquer as you can:\u003cbr\u003eBut if you fail or if you rise,\u003cbr\u003eBe each, pray God, a gentleman.","brand":"OGB","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47073840824560,"sku":"2940013943940","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013943940_p0.jpg?v=1763597581","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013943940","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}