What All Ought to Read.

A member living in the South asks for a list of books that persons of all ages ought to read in order to begin further reading—books that ought to be read, no matter in what direction a later taste might lead.

Here is a list prepared last year to fit this very question. It was prepared by some one well qualified for the task:

Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb.
Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Lady of the Lake, and Marmion.
Tennyson's Idyls of the King.
Macaulay's History of England.
Higginson's Young Folks' History of the United States.
Thackeray's The Virginians.
Walter Besant's For Faith and Freedom.
Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.
Brave Little Holland, and what She taught Us, by W. E. Griffis.
Lew. Wallace's Ben-Hur.
Bible Characters, by Charles Reade.
Recreations in Botany, by Caroline A. Creevey.
The History of a Mouthful of Bread, by Jean Macé.
Laboulaye's Fairy-Tales.
Life and Letters of Louisa M. Alcott.
John Halifax, Gentleman, by Mrs. Craik.
Longfellow's Evangeline.
Irving's Life of Washington.
Whittier's Snow-Bound.
Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables and Tanglewood Tales.
Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and Last of the Mohicans.
Amelia E. Barr's Bow of Orange Ribbon.
Alexander Johnston's American Politics.

How many of these have you read? And why may not a Chapter take up this list?