Radnor Township.

quality. A little distance from this flint milk-house, which appears like a Russian fancy in ice in a little house, which is an ornament to the. grounds, is the water-power which sends the supply needed at the extensive green-house, on this part of the grounds. In these buildings there is a wealth of bloom and of rich foliage plants from South America, Africa, and all of the tropical regions of the world, which is drawn upon for the beautifying of the lawn and house.

An extensive "Rosary" and elaborate gardens, both of flowers and their more substantial kindred of the kitchen, flourishes here, and near by adjoining a little lake is a novel device of the landscape artist, in what is called a "Stumpery," a mass of tree-stumps and gnarled roots and branches, covered with creeping vines and moss, rivaling in beauty and surpassing in oddity the wonderful orchids in the green-houses.

A description of Wootton - of the house and grounds - is impossible within the limits of such a work as is this; and the writer, after giving a few general ideas of its loveliness, must content himself with saying that, as the country home on which wealth has been lavished and taste used in its extreme, and as the exponent of advanced experimental and practical agriculture, it has few if any superiors in our country.

It was a fortunate day for the people of Radnor and the region round about when George W. Childs decided to establish his country-seat in their midst, for in that action lay the initiation of the idea which led to the founding of the model village of Wayne, an enterprise undertaken with no speculative purpose whatever, but the benefit of others, and destined, perhaps, to be, among all and above all of his good works, the noblest monument to his memory and to the purpose of his life.

We say this because Wayne will in a few years not only be the home of hundreds of healthful, happy families, but, by reason of the admirable carrying out of well-considered plans for sanitation, as well as for securing beauty, will suggest and become the model for other suburban aggregations of homes, and so be the medium of transmission to wider fields and to future generations of the good which is now manifested here.

But of Wayne and of that other, though lesser, beauty, "Wootton," with which Mr. Childs has enriched the loveliness of this locality in Delaware County, enough has already been said in the chapter of which this is a part.

It is fitting that in a history and description of the region which Mr. Childs has made his home, and which has been so largely and interestingly adorned and endowed by him, something, however brief, should be told of his active, broad, and useful life.

It is one of the greatest elements in the romance of American life that careers like that of Mr. Childs are not uncommon, - that the boy, however poor, however lowly, may make the man of wealth and of honorable distinction, - and it is one of the greatest glories of American life that while it affords in superlative degree these possibilities, there appears a general disposition on the part of those who strive successfully to extend moral and material assistance commensurate with their great abilities to others.

The life of George W. Childs affords a forcible and splendid individual illustration of the foregoing generalities. Born in Baltimore May 12, 1829, at the age of thirteen be entered the United States navy, but after a period of about fifteen months left the service and went to Philadelphia, where the door of a bookstore proved to be also the entrance to a life of prosperity. The right road had been found, it only remained for industry, perseverance, integrity, and tact to do their work. The boy possessed these qualities, and used them. Without them any one of the numerous obstacles he met might - and a series of them inevitably must - have caused his failure. Constantly advancing, he became, soon after he had attained his majority, a partner in the publishing-house of Childs & Peterson, where his energy was soon shown by the way in which he advanced Mr. Peterson's compilation entitled "Familiar Science," to a sale of two hundred thousand copies. His next publishing enterprises were both large undertakings, and both remarkably successful ones. For Dr. Kane's narrative of his Arctic Expedition he was enabled to pay the author seventy thousand dollars, and the success of Parson Brownlow's "Debates on Slavery" and "Sketches of Secession" may be approximately measured by the fact that he paid the author fifteen thousand dollars. He also published Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors," and such was his handling of that enterprise that the author made the following acknowledgment: "To George William Childs, the original publisher of this volume, who has greatly furthered my labors by his enterprise and zealous and intelligent interest, I dedicate the fruits of many years of anxious research and conscientious toil."

Upon the retirement of Mr. Peterson from the firm, in 1860, Mr. Childs formed a partnership with J. B. Lippincott, which lasted but a year, when he resumed business for himself. In 1863 he purchased the Publishers' Circular, and by remodeling it and changing its name to the American Literary Gazette anal Publishers' Circular, greatly increased its value to the trade. He also acquired the American Almanac, and renaming it the National Almanac, soon pushed it into a circulation of thirty thousand copies annually. During all of this time general book publishing had been carried on very extensively and successfully, but