WILLIAM SUDDARDS FRANKLIN
South Bethlehem Pa.,
October 22, 1913.
To face page vi
SUPPLEMENT TO PREFACE.
Your attention is called especially to the five short essays, or splashes, on pages [25], [29], [58], [91] and [95]; each of these short essays fills about a page, and if you read them you will understand why the Independent has called this little book A Package of Dynamite.
The first essay, entitled Bill's School and Mine, is easy reading, and if one is not irredeemably literal in one's mode of thinking, it is very pleasant reading. The tall talk which is sprinkled throughout this essay and which reaches a climax on pages [19] and [20] is not intended to be actually fatal in its seemingly murderous quality! Many contented city people in reading this essay should be prompted after the manner of a cow-boy who in a spell of seemingly careless gun play says to his sophisticated friend "Smile, D—— You, Smile".
The essay on The Study of Science, is somewhat of a "sticker", and if any particular reader does not like it he can let it alone, but there is an increasing number of young men in this world who must study science whether they like it or not. Indeed the object of this particular essay is to explain this remarkable and in some respects distressing fact. The essay relates primarily to the physical sciences, narrowly speaking, because the author's teaching experience has been wholly in physics and chemistry. One can get a fairly good idea of the author's point of view by reading the portions of the essay which stand in large print, but it is quite necessary to read the small print with more or less painful care if one is to get any fundamental idea of the matter under consideration. The reader will please consider thoughtfully the close juxtaposition of this essay and the following short essay on The Discipline of Work.
The third essay, Part of an Education, is the story of a tramp trip through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, and it is an introduction to the little essay on The Uses of Hardship.