THE COMMANDER OF THE FAITHFUL, by Pierre Loti, from Into Morocco (adapted)

WALT WHITMAN, by John Burroughs, from Whitman—A Study (adapted)

HEROISM IN HOUSEKEEPING, by Jane Welsh Carlyle, from Letters

A YOUTHFUL ACTOR, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, from The Story of a Bad Boy

WAR, by Thomas Carlyle, from Sartor Resartus

COON-HUNTING, by Ernest Ingersoll, from Wild Neighbors (adapted)

SIGHT IN SAVAGES, by W. H. Hudson, from Idle Days in Patagonia

THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER, by Washington Irving, from The Sketch Book

INTRODUCTION

The testimony of librarians as to the kind of books people are reading nowadays is somewhat discouraging to the book-lover who has been brought up in the old traditions. We are told that Scott and Thackeray and George Eliot cannot compete with the year's "best sellers," and that the old classics are read only by the few who have a cultivated taste and a trained intelligence.