Literature for Children. 15 



early years are in many respects the most precious of its life. 

 A wise mother told me a few days ago that, hard as it seemed 

 to some of her friends, she had never allowed that most ex- 

 cellent boy's and girl's paper, the YouWs Companion, to 

 enter the house. Not that she objected to a single word 

 printed in it, but she felt that it had a too dissipating influ- 

 ence upon her children's reading. Coming week after week, 

 it gave her children no time for the reading of great books — 

 books which have stood the test of time, and have been a 

 fountain of literary inspiration. The wisdom of her choice 

 for her children is illustrated by the fact that a few weeks 

 ago her first born was elected to write the ode for the gradu- 

 ating exercises of his class at Harvard next June. It would 

 be well for us all to ask ourselves the question, does it pay 

 for us, or for our children, to give to the reading of current 

 books so much of the time we might give to what has proved 

 itself to be the world's greatest literature? 



The results upon the child of such reading as I have been 

 advocating are too evident to detain us. A child, after his 

 earliest years, talks like those with whom he associates. "Live 

 with wolves and you will learn to howl," runs the proverb. 

 Live with the great masters of the English speech, and if there 

 is any literary instinct in you, you will learn to use clearly, 

 simply and musically the greatest of all languages. But this 

 is by no means the most important result to be gained. This 

 is an age full of unconscious, if not conscious, materialism. 

 Aspiration fades more quickly to-day than ever before from 

 the human soul. Imagination and the higher powers of the 

 soul tend to die in the suffocating atmosphere of mere fact. 

 But in him who has been taught in youth to wander in the 

 green pastures and beside the still waters of our great Eng- 

 lish literature the soul will not die. For him there will 

 always be open what the poet Spenser so beautifully called 

 " the world's sweet inn," where he can ever find rest and re- 

 freshment, and in which there is always to be found a large 

 upper chamber called Peace, whose windows open toward the 

 sun's rising. 



