Two quotations from men of good judgment come into mind at this point. Arthur T. Hadley, recently President of Yale University, has said, “Men in every department of practical life, men in commerce, in transportation or in manufactures, have told me that what they really wanted from our college was men who have this selective power of using books efficiently. The beginnings of knowledge are best learned in any home fairly well furnished with books.” Professor William Mathews has added, “It is not the number of books which a young man reads that makes him intelligent and well-informed, but the number of well-chosen ones that he has mastered so that every valuable thought in them is a familiar friend.”

In those two quotations the ideas of prime importance to every father are, first, that the beginnings of knowledge are best learned in the home; and, second, that it is the mastery of what is read that really counts. In school a child learns to read; at his home he reads to learn. At school he learns how he ought to read; but it is at his home that he learns to read in that manner. What a boy does in school is a small part of the total amount of his reading, and its influence is small indeed. In home reading, then, reading of the right material in the right way, is to be found the great influence in education and the great factor in the building of character.

If such is the case, what more important work can there be for the father than to read with his son, to watch these beginnings of education which mean so much more than the mere instruction in school, and to be a power in developing that right method of reading which means not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the acquirement of power and the making of character. The busy man is tired at night and inclined to think that he has no time to give to reading with his boys. He may think, too, that reading childish stories is beneath his dignity. Such is not the case. There is a great abundance of literature that is manly, and at the same time interesting to a boy. If the father feels that he is past the time when he has any sympathy with the fairy stories and the little poems that the infants like, if he thinks the nursery rhymes are silly and the fables too old to be true, that is because he has not recently read them. Busy men, men of power and influence, like to renew their youth by going to the simple things they loved as children, and not a few of them find that the years have given them new powers of interpretation and that what was to them at one time only an amusing tale is now replete with the philosophy of the universe. Yet there may be fathers of so practical a mind that works of imagination have no hold upon them. To them, however, the world of literature is by no means barren. There are history, biography and essays upon a thousand subjects, any one of which will interest a boy and at the same time his father. Particularly is this true when the reading is aloud and interspersed with free conversation upon the subjects that come to the surface. If the father can only select the right material and read it with his son there is no question whatever about the interest that will develop for both. A busy man has little time to select reading; in all probability he has not had the experience to enable him to do so wisely, for he has been so absorbed in business that he has forgotten what he knew best as a boy and is unable to tell just what appealed to him most. It may be that he never in his youth had the opportunity to read the best of literature and does not know where to turn to find it. He hears his little family talking about what they read at school and how they ought to read and feels himself behind the times and hesitates to make an exhibition of himself before his children. To any father, a collection such as that in Journeys Through Bookland is of inestimable value. When it is considered that in addition to the literary material there are abundant suggestions as to how interest may be created and how the reading may be made most profitable, then the set becomes indispensable. In other words, Journeys contains the material that must be in every family to make it “fairly well furnished with books,” and it provides a way of “mastering the books so that every valuable thought is a familiar friend.”

If fathers could be persuaded to spend one evening with their boys in the reading and discussion of some selection in Journeys, they would not willingly forego the pleasure thereafter. It has happened so many times that we know this is not an overstatement. Fathers by the score have written us on the subject. One says, “I have solved the problem of keeping my boys off the streets, or, rather, Journeys has done it for me.” “I have never spent a happier evening. The boys staid up with me till after their usual bed time and when they had retired, I read on for half the night,” says another. “I feel young again, and John and I are great chums. Reminiscences of a Pioneer kept me telling stories long after we had finished reading the sketch.” Who are these fathers? Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we may expect, for they are somewhat interested in reading, because of their life work. But they are not the most numerous, by any means. Railroad men, manufacturers, farmers, men in hundreds of vocations acknowledge the delight of reading Journeys with their children. Is there anything finer, more wholesome, more inspiring than the thought of fathers and children reading together, and together feeling the inspiration that radiates from the great masterpieces.

But this chapter is not an argument for the purchase of Journeys. That you, father of a growing boy, are reading these lines is evidence that you have thought well enough of the Journeys idea to place a set of books in your family. You have done this because you recognized that in this age of specialists, you, a business man, could not be expected to select reading matter for your son and assist him in his growth and development with the same skill as can those who have devoted many years to that special problem. No attempt is made to advise you on the conduct of your business or to direct the management and control of your son. But a sincere effort has been made to help you to join with your boy in that hearty sympathy which will make him happier, better and more of a man; which will make you young again and add to your pleasure without increasing your burdens. What we want is to make the books most effective, to help them be the power for good that we know they can be, and more than anything else, to make them a living bond between father and son. So let us examine the books together with these thoughts in mind and see if we cannot find just the things that will arouse your enthusiasm and make you young again, an equal and a friend who can lead your boy where you want him to go and where he will gladly follow you.

For instance, there is in the sixth volume that kindly humorous account of a boyhood in Wisconsin in the early part of the last century, Reminiscences of a Pioneer (Volume V, 340). Every man will be interested in it, and he cannot read it aloud to a boy of seven without catching the attention of the child. Even a lad of sixteen will get into the spirit of the thing, although it may not be the same incidents that will attract him. Think of the contrast between that humble log cabin with its visiting Indians and the luxurious steam-heated flat of your son, or the farm house with all modern conveniences that a friend of yours may have in the very region where our little friend was frightened more by the strange Dutch immigrants than he was by the red men whom he saw every day. Think of a six or seven year old boy that had never seen an apple and who could enjoy chokecherries and crab apples, even though he couldn’t get his face back into line on the same day in which he ate them fresh from the tree. Think of offering raw turnips to the guests and of people coming twenty miles to get a small piece of salt pork, because they were so tired of fresh meat and fish. Think that these things happened less than a hundred years ago and within forty miles of the now big and flourishing city of Milwaukee. What lessons there are in courage, skill, self-reliance and contentment in the lives of these early pioneers, especially the devoted mother who kept her yeast alive so many years, and stood off the Indians with one hand while she tended to her increasing family with the other. Can you imagine a boy who wouldn’t be interested in the sturdy youngster who earned and refused his first quarter of a dollar for paddling a man across the river in a heavy dugout? Don’t you think your son will have a host of questions to ask about it all and that you will be glad to talk to him about the Indians he likes to imitate when he plays? Can’t you see that reading such as this is worth while and that every moment spent in this way is an investment for yourself in the boy’s confidence and good graces?

Other selections of a somewhat similar nature, all of which will appeal to boys at the time when Indians and adventure are of more interest than anything else, are the following:

Have no fear that the boy’s love for Indians and adventure is a thing to suppress. It is an evidence of growth and of development. You know every boy lives over in himself the history of his race, and as there was a time when the life of mankind was a struggle with physical difficulties and personal danger so there is a time when every boy feels within himself the admiration for brave deeds and the desire to fight and conquer. Your province it is to meet him on that ground, enjoy with him the tales of lofty daring and physical prowess, the tales of stirring adventure and narrow escapes, and to lead him gently with you into the fields of history where achievements in science, commerce and engineering take the place of battles with wild animals and wilder Indians.

Don’t feel that you have not the time to do the things recommended. We can always find the time to do the things we like to do, and this means of joining in the thoughts of your boy will be one of the things you will most enjoy when you have once accustomed yourself to it.