PREFACE

The series of World Literature Readers, designed for use in Grades V-IX, aims to give a glimpse into the real life of the various nations of the world to open a gate upon a path which, if the youthful explorer wills to follow it, may lead him on into wide fields.

He who has learned to read is no longer a citizen of one age or one land, but of all ages and all lands. Through literature and through art he may lose the boundaries of his own meager experience and win his way into the thoughts, ideals, aspirations, knowledge, and visions of the best minds of all times and races the possessions of the entire human family. To realize our world heritage we need to touch the beginnings of things, in the folk tale and myth not only of our own people and land but of all peoples and lands; we need companionship with the heroes of the human race, — not only the heroes of war and adventure but the heroes of our common life, for the race, as Hamilton Mabie says, "lives in its heroic folk, its men and women who dare and do, the ever-returning figure in its myths, traditions, epics, histories, novels."

Out of the common life, out of the simple sensations that spring from sight of star-decked sky, of splendor of dawn and sunset, of storm and rain, of free, wild life of bird and beast; that spring from knowledge of the struggles of men and women who do the world's work, out of this

common life have come the elements that flowered into beauty at the touch of the masters of music, literature, poetry, sculpture, architecture, and painting.

The youth of to-day cannot see our American land as it was in the days of our pioneer forefathers, nor England as it was in the time of Shakespeare, nor Egypt, Greece, and Rome as they thrilled to the touch of the ancient master builders, but through books and through art he may lay hold of the elements of those far-away lives and build them into a structure in the realm of the spirit, perhaps not unlike what Robinson and Brewster saw, what the seer of Stratford beheld, and Phidias and Rameses dreamed.

So the World Literature Readers attempt to bring into prominence the special characteristics and genius of each nation, the material used being drawn from stores of literature, history, and art—whatever can aid in presenting the particular gifts of each to the world.

The present volume attempts to make the life on which our English civilization is based as real and vital as possible. The Egyptian section touches upon the life and art of ancient Egypt, the mysteries of the desert, the Sphinx, and the pyramids; it gives stories from the life of Joseph and from the lives of the Israelites at the time of their bondage in Egypt, from the Arabian Nights, and from Plutarch. The Greek section includes vivid pictures of the Homeric idyls (the stories of Nausicaa and Ulysses and Jason, of Baucis and Philemon and Pandora, retold by Lamb and Kingsley and Hawthorne), hints as to the greatness of Greek art, and a touch of modern Greece. The Roman section gives a bit of the story of Æneas, and other tales from Roman mythology, descriptions of the Roman achievements in engineering, stories from the

life of Julius Cæsar, and extended selections from "The Last Days of Pompeii" and from Marcus Aurelius.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publishing houses whose kindness permitted the use of the following copyrighted material: selections from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edna Dean Proctor, used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of the works of these authors; "Springtime in Greece" and "A Modern Nausicaa," from "In Argolis," by George Horton (A. C. McClurg & Co.); "A Victor of the Games," from "A Victor of Salamis," by William Stearns Davis, and "The Temple of Castor and Pollux" and "The Roman Forum," from "Stories in Stone from the Roman Forum," by Isabel Lovell (The Macmillan Company); "The Child and the Wind," by Lucy Lyttleton (Thomas B. Mosher, publisher); "The Flight of Æneas," translated by Harlan H. Ballard (through the kindness of Mr. Ballard) (Charles Scribner's Sons); and "The Approach to the Desert," by Robert Smythe Hichens (Frederick A. Stokes Company).

CELIA RICHMOND