their sons, will face the dangers of battle just as women face other perils they cannot escape. And he adds:

"It is our duty individually and as a Nation to avoid all quarrels, to avoid every species of brutality, of wrong-doing, of wanton offense, to try to inculcate gentleness and fair and upright dealing as between man and man, nation and nation; but it is also our duty to keep ourselves masters of our own souls, and possessed of those stern virtues, for the lack of which no softness of manners, no gentleness of nature, and, above all, no soft and easy course of life, will in any way atone."

Let me add (and it is not so much another

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story as at first appears) that the women who are interested in Preparedness are likewise interested in the way Congress is going to bring it about. Housekeepers for the most part, considering oftentimes, as many must, how to make both ends meet, they are not exactly dazzled by the way in which the business end of Congress conducts some of its departments. If certain of the slipshod, haphazard methods which result in duplication and unnecessary expense are reformed at Washington, many thousands of dollars now being wasted can go toward adequate Preparedness.

MARGARET SHAW GRAHAM.

Louisville, Kentucky.

A

MOTHER writes me that her boy is a great reader, but, she thinks, does not read the best literature; and she asks me to suggest some books which she may recommend to him. I cannot do so without the danger of doing more harm than good by my counsels. For there are various objects in reading and various ways of reading, and to give intelligent counsel to a reader one must know why he reads and should know how he reads.

The Germans are said to have a proverb that reading is an excuse for not thinking. That a boy is a great reader does not necessarily indicate that he is a great thinker.

Sometimes reading in order to stop thinking is profitable. The tired mind goes on and on at night in its treadmill when there is no longer any wheat to be threshed.

Then a

book which will get the overworked and overburdened mind out of its treadmill is useful. Some one has called such books "stop thoughts.' Some of our cheap magazines furnish very efficient stop thoughts." When I look over the literature exposed at an American news-stand, I am inclined to think that the market is overstocked. The supply may not be greater than the demand; but it is in excess of the real intellectual need.

Quite different from these soporifics are the novels which furnish real recreation. They do not stop the thought; they change its activity. They are a diversion-that is, they divert the mental activity from its accustomed channel into one quite different. The home-maker, wearied by the care of the household, when the children are in bed and the house is still, diverts her mind from the weariness of the past and the worries of the future by living for an hour in a world of imagination.

The distinction between a really good novel and a "stop thought may be difficult to define, but it is real. I have just been reading" David Penstephen," and while absorbed in the sorrowful problem of the remorseful mother and the perplexity of the puzzled son, neither of them helped by the irresponsible though affectionate father, I have forgotten the problems of the war in Europe and politics in the United States. It has not been a "stop thought," but a diversion. Sometimes the best rest for a mind wearied by problems which demand decision and action is absorption in a problem which calls for neither decision nor action. Sometimes the best respite from activity in the real world is a temporary sojourn in a world that is imaginary. But it is always disastrous to emigrate from the real world and spend one's

life in a world that is unreal, and this is equally true whether the unreal world is one of romance or of pietism, whether it is furnished by a circulating library or by a monastic cell.

Closely allied to reading for recreation is reading for inspiration. The best novels furnish inspiration as well as recreation. The greatest novelists are idealists, at least to this extent, that either by portraits, by contrasts, or by suggestion they furnish ideals which refresh and often invigorate. In another way, the best poetry, while it recreates, also inspires. A walk through the fields with Wordsworth, a visit to Arthur's Round Table with Tennyson, a trip to India with Kipling, a study of the ever-varied problem of human life with Browning, sends one back to his own seemingly commonplace life with a new experience of beauty, of chivalry, of human brotherhood, of hope.

A different kind of inspiration, more immediate and practical, is furnished by the best biographies. I am writing these lines at Hampton Institute, Virginia, and have been reading here the life of its founder, General Armstrong. I should look elsewhere for accurate and adequate information concerning the Civil War or the Reconstruction period; the life of Thomas Arnold would probably supply better material for the student of pedagogical problems; but I cannot easily conceive a book which would do more to inspire in a young man or woman the high resolve, the divine consecration, the indomitable courage, which, combined, always make life worth living.

Among books of inspiration also are to be placed devotional books, by which I mean books written by those who have a consciousness of the presence of God in their lives and know how to give a frank and honest expression of their experience. But I must leave to some future paper a consideration of the value and the peril of devotional literature.

For information we go to books of history and books of science; to the first for an account of what has taken place in the world of men, to the second for what has taken place in nature.

I wonder how many readers have got their historical ideas from novels. It is a very poor source from which to obtain accurate information. For the novelist is an artist; he speaks to the imagination and to the emotions; and he uses such facts of life, or

uses them in such combinations, or portrays them in such fashion, as will make the most effective appeal to the imagination and the emotions. I am very fond of Walter Scott and read and re-read his romances. But I do not go to " Quentin Durward" for a true portrait' of Louis XI of France, nor to "The Talisman" for a true portrait of Richard the Lion-Hearted. Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin gives a very vivid picture of slavery; it may even be characterized as a realistic picture. But if one wishes information as to what slavery was in the United States in 1850 he would better read the chapters on slavery in James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States."1 For this reason I am shy of modern problem novels.

to read such stories as "The Pit" and "The Harbor" lest I mix up in my memory the vivid pictures which the artist has given with the less interesting but more scientifically accurate accounts in official reports. I read with interest "Anna Karénina " and " Peace and War," but always with a doubt whether they furnish a true photograph of Russian society, and always remembering the wise remark of a critical friend that the Lord meant Tolstoy for a writer of romances, and he tried to make himself over into a social reformer.

There are two ways of conceiving history: one as an evolution of the human race in which the individuals are but puppets mechanically playing the parts assigned to them by destiny; the other as the product of the wills of the men who not only play their parts but extemporize them. An extreme interpretation of the first view is furnished by Buckle's " History of Civilization," once a popular but now a forgotten book; an extreme interpretation of the other, by Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship," which will never be forgotten as long as English literature lasts. According to the first view, the Reformation made Luther; according to the second, Luther made the Reformation. Personally I believe that history is a drama in which men play the parts assigned to them; but by their free interpretation they make the drama what it is.

But, whichever view is correct, the second view is the one which interests. More readers are interested in human life and character than in scientific evolution. Most readers will get a more vivid, because more human, view of American history by reading, in 1 Vol. I, Chapter IV.

proper chronological order, a selection from the "American Statesman Series " than from reading Bancroft's or McMaster's history of the United States, and a more vivid view of ancient and European history by reading the Harpers' series which my father wrote and about which Abraham Lincoln said, "To them I am indebted for about all the historical knowledge I have," than by reading any compendium of medieval or European history with which I am acquainted. When the reader has finished this primary course, if his interest is unsated, he may profitably take up John Fiske's series of American histories or John Richard Green's "History of England." As to the old-time school histories, which give little more than a catalogue of events without indicating their relation either to the development of the race or the life of the individual, reading them is about as interesting and as intellectually profitable as reading a city directory.

Of science books there are also two types. One treats the mechanical operations of nature as the work of a vast, mysterious, and interesting machine. The other treats nature as something full of beauty, vitality, and human interest. Books of the latter type often combine with valuable records of careful observation narratives of more or less romantic adventure. Illustrations of such nature books are furnished by Maeterlinck's "The Life of the Bees," Fabre's "Life of the Fly," Wallace's "Island Life," John Muir's "Travels in Alaska," John Tyndall's "Hours of Exercise in the Alps." These books, which illumine natural phenomena with a restrained and rational imagination, connect them with human life, and so portray them as to awaken human emotions, are the books to give to the unscientific reader to awaken his interest in the world of nature. There are no better books to make geography an attractive study to young readers than Nansen's "Farthest North," Captain Robert Falcon Scott's "The Voyage of the Discovery," Livingstone's "Last Journals in Central Africa," and Stanley's "The Congo."

In this paper I have said nothing about books of art, which may be read either for recreation, inspiration, or information, nor about books of philanthropy, sociology, economics, and the like, for these are books for study rather than for reading except by the scholar. But I hope I have made it clear to

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any one who wishes to take up a course of good reading for himself or to interest the young in reading that he must not only consider what books to select, but also what purpose in reading to encourage.

My counsel, then, to this mother, and to all mothers, teachers, and librarians endeavoring to guide the reading of others, is this: Study your boy; endeavor to understand his tastes and his temperament. What in literature interests him? Does he read for recreation or for inspiration or for information? What sort of books appeal to him-fiction or biography or adventure or history or science? What faculties are employed in his readingimagination or observation ? Is his interest in man and affairs or in nature and her operations? If he is reading for recreation story books of wild adventure, lead him on through Scott and Stevenson to the real adventures of Daniel Boone, David Crockett, David Livingstone, or Captain Scott. If he is interested in animal stories, do not deny to him Thompson Seton, but go on from Thompson Seton to Maeterlinck or Fabre. If nature appeals to him, introduce him to John Muir or John Tyndall. Interest yourself in whatever interests him. Read with him, or to him, or preferably get him to read to you something that interests him while you go on with your sewing or knitting. Be interested in what interests him, that you may interest him in what interests you. And in your joint excursions into literature form as clear a conception for yourself and give as clear a conception to him as you can of the object which animates you.

The same principle may guide any one who wishes to substitute for mere desultory and haphazard reading something more informing or more inspiring. If you enjoy books of adventure, do not take up Darwin's "Descent of Man" because you ought. If you enjoy John Muir, don't take up Bancroft's "History of the United States " because you ought. Study because you ought to study; read because you enjoy reading, and read what you enjoy. But always with a purpose to substitute gradually a higher for a lower enjoyment, and therefore a nobler for a poorer literature. And do not forget that the enjoyment of acquiring information and the enjoyment of receiving inspiration is a different enjoyment from that furnished by mere recreation.

"T

HERE'S more rivers an' less water, more cows an' less milk, an' you can see further an' see less here than in any country where I've ever been." So an ebony trooper in one of the Negro cavalry regiments described, in the terms of a common Texan story, the barren northern Chihuahua country through which the American "Punitive Expedition" is pursuing the meager trail of Pancho Villa.

Right here let it be said that the great bandit's name is not pronounced in English as it is spelled, nor is it pronounced Vilya, as it would be in Spain. In Mexico and on the border they call it Vee-yah.

The event which the border army has impatiently awaited for three years, the entrance of Mexico, has not been so pleasant in the realization as it was in the anticipation. Armies are made to fight, and when they fight they like to fight like men. But the first three weeks of the Mexican jaunt of our expedition brought forth only two small running skirmishes, which were more like rabbit drives than battles. And the tawny upland desert of northwestern Chihuahua is not the course one would choose for a hare-andhound chase such as the pursuit of Villa has been in its first stages.

The greater scarcity of water in the rivers, which are unaided through their twisting channels by man, and the greater scarcity of milk in the cows, which are left to graze on the unnutritious desert uncared for, is indeed the principal difference between that part of old Mexico, where eight regiments of our army are now sweating through the sand, and the border regions of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, where most of the men in those regiments had spent many days prior to that crimson dawn when Villa ran amuck at Columbus. For many miles on both sides of the border the landscape is made up of broad ribbons of yellow sand spattered with blotches of savage, thorny vegetation in buffs and browns and .grays uncoiling between walls of jagged and grotesquely

shaped mountains of a cool, deep blue from a distance, which melts into an arid tan on approach. But through the clear air on the American side the eye may rest on frequent flashing windmills surrounded by fair green cottonwoods and willows, while it is true that through the eye-smarting clarity of vistas south of the line one can see farther and yet see much less that is worth the seeing.

We Americans have conquered the last frontier within our own country, and the only zonę within shot of our eyes where man is still mainly bested by nature lies over the Mexican border. Columbus, New Mexico, is a typical frontier town. Half a hundred one-storied shacks of brown or white adobe, with half a dozen two-storied frames of wood, are scattered about the town's center, marked by the ashes of four of the principal buildings which Villa's rum-crazed children of nature burned.

At early morning cow-punchers with the loose-fringed "chaps," mouse-colored sombreros, six-inch spurs at heel, and with the long, graceful six-shooters of childhood's picture-books on their right hips, instead of the ugly modern automatics, canter into town and hitch their shaggy little mounts in the shade before reformed saloons, where their riders abide till the cool of late afternoon. The only touch out of keeping with the traditions of the wild and woolly West is that no drink more alcoholic than grape-juice and "lemon sody" can be bought over the bar.

Little one-storied Columbus, whose dustblown streets are always empty at hot noon, has suddenly found itself a metropolis. Were the two remaining hotels each ten times as large as the largest one formerly boasted by the town which Villa burned, they could not hold the horde of correspondents, photographers, souvenir hunters, and army hangerson that has made little Columbus self-conscious and spoiled.

My first night in the town I was obliged to sleep on a pyramid of baled hay piled high (Continued on page following illustrations)