4 Colorado College Studies. 



Nowhere does this rule apply so well as in the case of 

 children's books. If we do not accept in its entirety the 

 position which the first two writers quoted above have taken, 

 we can at least accept it with Emerson's qualification. If at 

 the end of a year the book has proved it has a rijj^ht to live, 

 then let the child read it. Only most of us, after having 

 thoroughly studied the subject, would desire a still longer 

 period of probation. 



If the child should not read so-called children's books, what 

 should he read? Miss Yonge and Charles Dudley Warner 

 have already answered the question. Let them read adult 

 literature — the books their elders read. This statement n^eds 

 at least one limitation. Let the children read, not what their 

 elders read, but what their elders ought to read, for the grown- 

 up members of the family, as often as the children, read the 

 latest and the trashiest books. In fact, what the children 

 read is largely determined by what their elders read. Trash 

 on the library table means trash in the nursery. 



But the question rises at once in many of your minds, is 

 the child capable of understanding adult literature? Is there 

 not the danger of shooting above the heads of the children in 

 seeking to limit them to such books? 



It would not do before such an assemblage as this to base 

 our answer to such a question on anything less than child 

 study. This is now the fashionable subject of research, and 

 one of our good fashions it is, too, though it has its absurdi- 

 ties, like most other fashions. What are the characteristics 

 of the child mind which has this voracious literary appetite? 

 Theories have no weight in this age unless they are theories 

 that have developed out of facts. " Children are indeed treated 

 and written about sometimes," said a very wise writer on our 

 general theme more than thirty years ago, " Children are 

 indeed treated and written about as though they were little 

 fools, and any baby talk or twaddle were good enough for 

 them; but we are in the main inclined to believe that they 

 are great fools who make this mistake, and so sadly libel 

 God's handiwork." "The great human mind is in the little 

 child as in the gray-headed sage," but the intellect — what we 



