There is much truth in the saying that "old things are best, old books are best, old friends are best." We like to connect in thought our best-loved books and our best-loved friends. A good friend must have some of the wisdom of a good book, though good books often talk to us with wisdom and also with humor and courtesy greater than any living friend may show. "Sometimes we think books are the best friends; they never interrupt or contradict or criticise us."
Every year in our own country about ten thousand books are published. Most of them die in early life. Three hundred years from now every one of this year's ten thousand books will be dead and forgotten, except possibly thirty or forty. The very best books do not die young. The books written about three hundred years ago that are read to-day—like Shakespeare's plays—are as a rule the books that deserve to live forever. And, "Gentle Reader," if you are wise you will see why the old books are best: they are the wheat, and the winds of time have blown only the chaff away.
Is it not strange that in the olden times so few poems or books or stories were written for children? The "Iliad," the stories of King Arthur, the "Canterbury Tales," and "Gulliver's Travels" and "Robinson Crusoe," were written for men and women.
But happily this is the children's age, and now nearly half of all the books written are written for children. You must remember, however, that all boys and girls are children—in the eyes of the law—till they are twenty-one years old.
We know a little boy who read last week a very modern story. The book was bound in red cloth. It had a gilt top and very modern pictures drawn by a great artist and printed in three or four colors. How different from the books of one hundred years ago, with their black covers and queer pictures!
This story read by the little New York boy last week has been read by many little boys in Iowa, and by many little girls in Georgia. It tells about an orphan boy who was "bound out" to a farmer who treated him cruelly. He ran away to the Rocky Mountain region, where he had many adventures with robbers and Indians and blizzards. He was strong and heroic; he could shoot straight and ride the swiftest horses, and nothing ever hurt him very much.
This, as I have said, is a modern story. It does not tell the reader to be truthful and good. It just tells him a story of thrilling adventures and daring escapes from danger. But the old-fashioned story is different; and now we are getting close to our subject.
I will tell you all about the old-fashioned stories in a moment; but I must remind you that these old stories were written about a hundred years ago. They were usually written to teach a moral lesson. Dear old John Aikin, or his sister Anna Letitia Barbauld, or Maria Edgeworth, or Jane Taylor would say some morning—at any rate, so it seems to me—"I will write a story to-day to teach boys and girls to be industrious." And so "Busy Idleness" was written. Or one of these old authors would decide to write a story the main object of which was to teach little girls not to be too curious, and so "The Inquisitive Girl" was written. Both of these stories, and many others equally good, are found in this volume.
I could really tell you many interesting things about these old-fashioned stories but I will do something better—urge you to read them yourself. They are quaint, delightful, and entertaining stories, besides teaching a moral. You boys and girls should read every one of them, and then read them again, out loud, to your mothers or to anybody else who will listen.
Among all the old-fashioned stories in this volume I find only one that seems to me "really funny," and that is "Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about the Giants and Fairies." Think of a giant so tall that "he was obliged to climb up a ladder to comb his own hair." But this bit of humor is not so good as a very modern nonsense-story entitled "The Giant's Shoes," which I read the other day, and from which the Managing Editor permits me to quote this little passage: