192 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



must have new and fresh and impressive ideals. 

 The best fiction ever helps us into their realm, 

 and this realm is real though ideal. It sheds a 

 halo of superhuman light on the ordinary paths, 

 it transforms and dignifies and beautifies. These 

 ideals come best and freshest from the living 

 pages of a strong and healthful story. Here 

 the characters live, we make their acquaintance, 

 we enter into their life ; it is different from ours, 

 we are at once in another world, and what a 

 delightful and restful change, what interest is 

 gained. These guests with whom we have been 

 living through the book are invited guests and 

 many of them have come to stay with us through 

 life. "The story element" belongs to life. All 

 life delights in it that is at all healthful. It is 

 the child's realm, in which his biggest faculty, 

 his imagination, has its revelry and peoples his 

 worlds with its brightest and best; it is the 

 young person's dreamland whence come those 

 peculiar day-dreams that awake one to life's 

 realities; it is the mature mind's recreation 

 hour, and the solace and cheer of the aged. 



The work of fiction by our best writers is 

 full of high-minded purpose and principle; it 

 has in it the true teaching spirit, touching many 

 of the great lines of present-day thinking and 

 noblest living. A good story full of real and 



