into life. Here is this dainty stanza from Mrs. Blake's "The Dawning of the Year":

"There the primrose breath is sweet, and the yellow gorse is set

A crown of shining gold on the headlands brown and

wet;

Not a nook of all the land but the daisies make to glow, And the happy violets pray in their hidden cells below."

Nor is the finest prose less rich in resources than poetry in offering selections adapted to children. There are portions of Hawthorne's "Marble Faun" which charm the juvenile reader and afford as much interest at the age of ten as at twenty; and there are few of the standard authors in history, biography, essays, or prose romance, in which are not found valuable matter for juvenile reading. Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" tales, "The Gentle Boy," and his biographies, especially adapted for young readers, suggest themselves; but the larger proportion of the best reading for children is that which has not been written for that purpose. Many of the monographs on great men by Edwin Percy Whipple; passages in the "Autocrat" and the "Poet" at the Breakfast Table, where the keen,

racy brilliancy of Dr. Holmes appeals to both old and young; much of Thoreau; and the biographies of Lincoln, especially that by Nicolay and Hay; those of Longfellow, of Tennyson, and of Phillips Brooks, - are, in portions, peculiarly adapted to be skilfully presented to childish sympathy. If comprehensive knowledge of that which is best in the world of books united with judicious selection and unfaltering attention can but lead a child onward into literature, any girl or boy should, by the age of sixteen, be well grounded in all the various branches of literary activity. Yet it is by no Yet it is by no means uncommon to find high school and college graduatesyoung people well equipped with all the technique of scholarship — who are yet strangely unfamiliar with literature. It is not going too far to say that if this familiarity is not a growing possession, from the nursery up, it can never be absolutely acquired. For literature must be assimilated into life and contribute to that reservoir of the unconscious knowledge before it can be accounted an absolute possession. "One ought every day, at least," says Goethe, "to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a

few pictures, and speak a few reasonable words."

The potent persistence of the influence, coloring and determining all after-life, that results from the home atmosphere of personal refinement and of scholarly association, however adverse are outer circumstances, is revealed in this bit of autobiographical data by one of the noblest and most gifted of living men who, in an unpublished reminiscence, says,—

ish region, black in treason and ignorance, no schools, no music, nothing that makes one, except nature's great melancholy forests. And then suddenly, as if

in a day, from my father's store in

from "

my

Vir

gil which I was trying to commit and understand, I was dropped into this wilderness, and for ten years

- three at O that life of

or more I went to school but six months, a district school, three at

fevers, of dreams, of disappointments, with piles of books which I read at the end of a patch of plowing in the fields !"

These graphic words tell what it is to be a lover of books; how they may transform and

illuminate the loneliest and the darkest hours; stimulate every latent and lofty energy and inspire and nurture noble aims. "These hoards of wealth you can unlock at will," says Wordsworth. Literature is, indeed, the most portable, so to speak, of any form of art. Great pictures, music, and sculpture are, almost inevitably, limited to large social centres; but books may penetrate into the humblest and the most isolated household, bringing their intimate companionship with their choice thought and beautiful imagery.

"And plant a poet's word, even, deep enough
In any man's breast, looking presently
For offshoots, you have done more for the man
Than if you dressed him in a broad-cloth coat
And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire."

Reading is not, indeed, a mere passive entertainment, but a creative activity as well. A good book sets the entire mental mechanism in motion. It acts as a motor applied to the mind. To give one's self to reading is not simply to be borne through the realms of thought in a golden chariot, but is, rather, the conquering of a region into which one perpetually advances; and the finer and more perfect is the assimi

lation of the author by the reader, the more complete is his triumphant quest over this special territory. The book may be assimilated into life and the need, then, for the book is over. One presses on to the next. "Permanence is

but a word of degrees," says Emerson. "The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is, the idea after which his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

"But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions.

"Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder; the steps are actions; the new prospect is power."

Emerson proceeds to say that "a man's