Johnson, "that was wished longer by its readers, excepting
Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, and Don Quixote?"

At this time, when the subject of vocational training is receiving
so much attention, and public school instruction is being
criticized because, its critics say, it does not prepare boys and
girls to meet the demands which life makes upon them, it is
interesting to read what was said almost a hundred years ago by a
man whose influence on education has been both deep and lasting in
character.

They have just been celebrating in France the centenary of Jean
Jacques Rousseau. In the early chapters of "Emile" we read: "Since
we must have books, there is one which, to my mind, furnishes the
finest treatise on Education according to nature. My Emile shall
read this book before any other. It shall for a long time be his
entire library. It shall be a test for all we meet during our
progress toward a ripened judgment, and so long as our taste is
unspoiled we shall enjoy reading it. What wonderful book is this?
Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is Robinson Crusoe."

There is no more useful talent than the ability to think and speak
(or write) clearly and simply, no matter what our vocation in
life. None know better how difficult it is to find writers with a
good narrative style than those editors whose training and
experience have made them realize its value and importance. If we
examine the experience of those who, in comparatively recent days,
have stirred men with the force and directness of their simple
speech, as Lincoln, for example, we find that as boys they were
great readers of the Bible, and Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's