ABSTRACT
But though month by month tens of thousands peruse the pages of this most popular of all the monthlies, even fame so great is not without alloy. Ill-natured people declare that the volume is as unintelligible as a book of logarithms to a schoolgirl, and that its study is as exacting a mental toil as the mastery of the integral calculus. Still we venture to think that after all there may be something worth pondering in a sixpenny "Bradshaw," — something that deserves the scrutiny even of gentlemen who can talk by the hour about the currency, who can revel in a "price current" that informs us that bones were "inanimate," and that "calves moved off heavily," and who can grow eloquent over the provincial politics of a town council's balance sheet.
