This is the pertinent title of a volume of poems by Hezekiah Butterworth, issued by the New England Publishing Co.
The author prides himself on his Yankee birth and his good Puritan name, with its Bible ring. His poems bear out this thought. Some of them have been published before, in periodicals, but each is stamped with the American impress. The author's aim is to aid in doing a work for his own country, and the ideas for which she stands, similar to what has been done by the poets for other lands,—embalm great incidents in popular verse. He gives us nearly sixty poems, opening with one descriptive of the Thanksgiving for America, by Ferdinand and Isabella, offered at Barcelona, in 1493. The poems commemorate Lincoln and Alexander the Tsar, the great liberators. Then follow Cameos of American History, introducing Ponce de Leon, Roger Williams, Harry Vane, Jefferson, Bennington. Chorcorua and Chickamauga are included in Pictures of Places. The book closes with poems about our Holidays and Festivals, such as Labor Day, Arbor Day, the Hay-field. Such a book is valuable in a growing family, valuable as a stirrer of patriotic blood.
