This little volume constitutes one number of the Christian Herald
Library series for 1896-97. The title indicates the scope and purpose
of the work. Of heavy reading the reader of to-day no doubt has a
sufficiency. Of light reading, that straw-and-chaff literature that
fills the air until the senses are confused with the whirlwind and
dust of it, he has a sufficiency also. Of that intermediate kind of
reading which is neither so heavy with erudition as to weigh us down
nor so light with the flying folly of prejudice as to make us
distracted with its dust, there is perhaps too little. The thoughtful
and improving passage for the unoccupied half hour of him who hurries
through these closing years of the century does not abound, but is
rather wanting in the intellectual provision of the age.

Let this volume serve to supply, in part at least, the want for brief
readings on important subjects. Herein a number of topics have been
chosen from the progress of the century and made the subjects of as
many brief studies that may be realized in a few minutes' reading and
remembered for long. Certainly there is no attempt to make these short
stories exhaustive, but only to make them hintful of larger readings
and more thoughtful and patient inquiry.

The Editor is fully aware of the very large circulation and wide
reading to which this little volume will soon be subjected. For this
reason he has taken proper pains to make the work of such merit as may
justly recommend it to the thoughtful as well as the transient and
unthoughtful reader. It cannot, we think, prove to be a wholly
profitless task to offer these different studies, gathered from the
highways and byways of the great century, to the thousands of good and
busy people into whose hands the volume will fall. To all such the
Editor hopes that it may carry a measure of profit as well as a