_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