THE MENTOR 



ISSUED WEEKLY BY 



The Mentor Association, Inc. 



52 East 19th St., New York, N. Y. 



MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1913 

 Volume I No. 34 



ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION. FIVE DOLLARS. SINGLE 

 COPIES FIFTEEN CENTS. FOREIGN POSTAGE Sl.SO 

 EXTRA. CANADIAN POSTAGE tl.OO EXTRA. ENTERED 

 AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK. N. Y. AS SEC- 

 OND-CLASS MATTER. COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE 

 MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. PRESIDENT AND TREAS- 

 URER, R. M. DONALDSON; VICE-PRESIDENT, W. M. 

 SANFORD; SECRETARY, L. D. GARDNER. 



Editorial 



The legend of The Mentor must by this 

 time have become familiar to all readers. 

 It is printed on the cover, "A Wise and 

 Faithful Guide and Friend." We have 

 been asked the origin of this. The phrase 

 is quoted exactly from the definition of 

 MENTOR as given by one of the highest 

 authorities in the English language. We 

 are glad that some one asked this. It is 

 the sort of inquiry that makes our mail 

 interesting. The character of corre- 

 spondence that comes to The Mentor is 

 extraordinary. It is the natural response 

 to the offer of service that The Mentor 

 extends. The keynote of The Mentor 

 Association plan is helpful service. Our 

 mail shows that there is a large public 

 that is eager and earnest in its desire to 

 benefit by this service. It seemed to us 

 that we could not express the spirit of 

 The Mentor better than by quoting liter- 

 ally the phrase that defines the word — "a 

 guide and friend." 



• • • 



In return The Mentor reader can be in 

 the full sense a guide and friend to us. 

 There must be an exchange in order to 

 get the greatest good out of an educa- 

 tional plan. You can help us if you do 

 as many others have done — write and tell 

 us what you think of The Mentor. A 

 number of valuable suggestions have come 

 to us in the mail. Under the stimulus of 

 the encouragement that we have had from 

 so many we are broadening the plan in 

 the future. Our new prospectus, just fin- 



ished, will tell you fully about this. It is 

 not simply a magazine subscription that 

 we are concerned with. We offer a mem- 

 bership in an Association that brings 

 many advantages. There is a saying, 

 " It is a good thing to be doing a good 

 thing, and it is a good thing to know that 

 you are." We know that The Mentor is 

 a good thing, and it is a good thing to be 

 told so by so many. A member of our 

 Advisory Board, Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 

 wrote us recently: "The Mentor is 

 really a triumph of high class work and 

 popular treatment. I believe that the 

 very best things can be given to people 

 in the very best way, not by writing down, 

 ^ut simply by using standard language in- 

 stead of technical language. The more I 

 think of the whole enterprise, the more I 

 believe in it." 



We want to know what you think of 

 The Mentor, and we want you to tell us 

 how we can be of benefit to you as a mem- 

 ber of the Association. Our service is not 

 complete in simply sending you The 

 Mentor and the pictures week by week. 

 We can bring you in touch with our Ad- 

 visory Board, so that you may have the 

 best advice in matters of side reading, and 

 intelligent direction as to the organization 

 and conducting of reading clubs; also ex- 

 pert information concerning books and 

 pictures that bear on the topics in The 

 Mentor. In the day's mail we find one 

 inquiry from a member of a reading club 

 who wants to know what side reading she 

 should take up to prepare for an evening 

 on "American Landscape Painters." The 

 copy of The Mentor treating that sub- 

 ject is to be the core and center of the 

 evening's reading. The writers of authority 

 associated with us enable us to give our cor- 

 respondent the benefit of the best advice. 

 • • • 



Another writer asks for a selection of 

 pictures suitable for wall decoration in the 

 schoolroom, leaving it to us to suggest 

 appropriate subjects. This is the sort 

 of inquiry that we delight in, and we 

 can help of course, for we have a great 

 store of good art material, to which we 

 are adding each week and from which a 

 wide variety of subjects can be selected. 



