are a few who are approved members of the Harry Wadsworth Club. That means
that they "look up and not down," they "look forward and not back," they
"look out and not in," and they "lend a hand." These papers were first
published, much as they are now collected, in the magazine "Our Young
Folks," and in that admirable weekly paper "The Youth's Companion," which
is held in grateful remembrance by a generation now tottering off the
stage, and welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the grandchildren as
they totter on. From time to time, therefore, as the different series have
gone on, I have received pleasant notes from other young people, whose
acquaintance I have thus made with real pleasure, who have asked more
explanation as to the points involved. I have thus been told that my
friend, Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, is not governed by all my rules for young
people's composition, and that Miss Throckmorton, the governess, does not
believe Archbishop Whately is infallible. I have once and again been asked
how I made the acquaintance of such a nice set of children. And I can well
believe that many of my young correspondents would in that matter be glad
to be as fortunate as I.

Perhaps, then, I shall do something to make the little book more
intelligible, and to connect its parts, if in this introduction I tell of
the one occasion when the _dramatis personae_ met each other; and in order
to that, if I tell how they all met me.

First of all, then, my dear young friends, I began active life, as soon as
I had left college, as I can well wish all of you might do. I began in
keeping school. Not that I want to have any of you do this long, unless an
evident fitness or "manifest destiny" appear so to order. But you may be
sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, there is nothing that
will teach you your own ignorance so well as having to teach children the
few things you know, and to answer, as best you can, their questions on