INTRODUCTION. 

Tr is seldom that I find a book so far above chil- 
dren that I cannot share its best thought with them. 
So when I first took up one of John Burroughs’s es- 
says, I at once foresaw many a ramble with my pupils 
through the enchanted country that is found within 
its breezy pages. To read John Burroughs is to live 
in the woods and fields, and to associate intimately 
with all their little timid inhabitants ; to learn that — 
“God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear, 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.”’ 
When I came to use Pepacton in my class of the 
sixth grade, I soon found, not only that the children 
read better but that they came rapidly to a better ap- 
preciation of the finer bits of literature in their reg- 
ular readers, while their interest in their new author 
grew quickly to an enthusiasm. Never was a little 
brother or sister more real to them than was “ Peggy 
Mel” as she rushed into the hive Jaden with stolen 
honey, while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the 
stately elm that played sly tricks, or the log which 
proved to bea good bedfellow because it did not grum- 
ble. Burroughs’s way of investing beasts, birds, in- 
sects, and inanimate things with human motives is 
very pleasing to children. They like to trace analo- 
gies between the human and the irrational, to think 
