The Soul of a Child

A feast was not a feast without more than plenty. Eating was always in order. An offer of a dish was as good as a command to partake. A refusal bordered on the offensive. Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of hospitality. Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one of life's worst evils. To eat well was to be well, and the natural conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat.-from Chapter XVIThe American immigrant experience is unique in the world in that it involved not a leaving behind of "the old country" but an absorption of traditions into the melting-pot culture of the New World. This lovely 1922 novel is a reminder of how a life in another world lingers with the settler from abroad: Journalist Edwin Björkman, a Swedish emigrant to the U.S., drew on his own childhood to create a loving portrait of a young boy's life in Stockholm. Woven throughout the tale and limned with love are the customs and manners of that long-ago life that have clearly been neither forgotten or abandoned but adapted and assimilated. Sweetly sentimental and bursting with treasured memories, this is a work to cherish... no matter where you were born.American author EDWIN BJÖRKMAN (1866-1951) wrote numerous works of translation and literary criticism. His work appeared in, among other sources, the journals The Reviewer and Mother Earth.