I.--_The Choice of Books_.


You are not to expect any stories this time. There will be very few words
about Stephen, or Sybil, or Sarah. My business now is rather to answer, as
well as I can, such questions as young people ask who are beginning to
have their time at their own command, and can make their own selection of
the books they are to read. I have before me, as I write, a handful of
letters which have been written to the office of "The Young Folks," asking
such questions. And all my intelligent young friends are asking each other
such questions, and so ask them of me every day. I shall answer these
questions by laying down some general rules, just as I have done before
but I shall try to put you into the way of choosing your own books, rather
than choosing for you a long, defined list of them.

I believe very thoroughly in courses of reading, because I believe in
having one book lead to another. But, after the beginning, these courses
for different persons will vary very much from each other. You all go out
to a great picnic, and meet together in some pleasant place in the woods,
and you put down the baskets there, and leave the pail with the ice in the
shadiest place you can find, and cover it up with the blanket. Then you
all set out in this great forest, which we call Literature. But it is only
a few of the party, who choose to start hand in hand along a gravel-path
there is, which leads straight to the Burgesses' well, and probably those
few enjoy less and gain less from the day's excursion than any of the
rest. The rest break up into different knots, and go some here and some
there, as their occasion and their genius call them. Some go after