THE OTHER DAY: The World of a Child

There's no startling sensitivity or precocity to this biographical backward look at a young childhood in England which pursues a pleasant, tranquil course, recaptures minor rather than momentous incidents with a certain charm. There were her reluctant visits to aunts, and happier times at her grandmother's; the death of a baby sister- and Queen Victoria; a summer at the Isle of Man and later at their own cottage in the country near her grandmother's house which no longer had its allure with the arrival there of Miss Bennett, a god-fearing, Bible reading woman; the birth of a baby brother, whose life was saved by her prayers and the nurse's poultices, and of two more children; her first school, which she attended unwillingly, and later a Convent school where life was a ""progression through a richly illuminated missal""; etc., etc. This all makes up a quiet chronicle of familiar, family scenes, for more conservative tastes.