Chapter I: Foreword

One day, a little more than a hundred years ago, a boy was walking along a crowded street in London. It is likely that Dick Whittington had walked on the very same street about the time when he heard Bow Bells ring. But this boy was not thinking about the bells of London. He had been reading a story in a book, and he was thinking of the people in the story, especially of a man called Leander who swam across the straits named the Hellespont.

The story of Hero and Leander is told in a poem. These two people were in love with one another. But Hero, who was very beautiful, was a priestess of Aphrodite, and she was not supposed to fall in love or marry. Leander lived at Abydos, which is on one side of the straits of the Hellespont. Hero lived in a high tower at Sestos, which is on the other side of the straits. The shores are rocky and dangerous, beautiful to look at, but hazardous for sailors and ships. Tides and winds make it difficult to sail through the straits, and very difficult at times to swim across from shore to shore. Leander used to swim from Abydos to Sestos after nightfall to see Hero, who had become his wife; and Hero, on her high tower, held a lighted lamp that shone like a star to guide Leander so that he would not be dashed on the rocks.

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The name of the boy who had been reading the story was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a country boy, the son of a clergyman, and he was at a boarding school in London. The school was for boys whose parents had not much money or who had no parents living.

On a school holiday, after breakfast, at which there was not a great deal to eat, the boys who were boarders were sent out into London and were not expected to come back until nightfall. Sometimes, they had nothing to eat all day long until supper-time. Coleridge was one of the boys who had to spend his holidays in this fashion.

On one holiday, Coleridge, as he walked along the crowded street, began to imagine how it would feel if he were swimming the Hellespont with Leander. You know how often we think when we are reading an interesting book that we are living with the people in the story. Being greatly absorbed in his thoughts, Coleridge began to move his arms as if he were swimming. If he had been in a field by himself, or on an empty street, no one would have minded. But Coleridge was on a crowded street, and by and by one of his arms struck a man who was passing, and his hand caught in the man's pocket. The man thought that Coleridge, who was only a boy, was trying to steal from him. However, he asked Coleridge a good many questions, and discovered that the boy had been reading in a book the story of Hero and Leander, and had been imagining that he was swimming across the Hellespont.

When the man found that Coleridge loved reading, but could not get the books he wanted easily, {vii} he took the boy to a library, which was not a free library but one where people had to pay a fee, and the man arranged for Coleridge to be allowed to read there.

Many stories are told of the different ways in which boys and girls have found famous books which they have read with enjoyment, and never forgotten. Another boy called Samuel--Samuel Johnson--had been looking for apples that he knew were hidden somewhere. He climbed upon a step-ladder to look behind the rows of books in his father's book shop, and while he was looking for the apples he found Plutarch's _Lives_. Very likely the boy Samuel Johnson began reading the book, and forgot about the apples. Another boy once was told to watch a fire, which was burning rubbish in a field, so that it would not spread and burn the fences. He watched the fire for a while, but he had a book in his pocket and presently he forgot to watch, and so the fence was burned. Likely he was punished at the time, but years after his friends used to tell the story, for the boy had become an eminent man. How many of us have climbed into trees to read books in a leafy solitude! Louisa May Alcott was one of the girls, later known for her charming stories, who had a special tree into which she used to climb, so that no one should interrupt her while she was reading.

This book which you are reading now is meant to help you to find books that you will enjoy. You may begin at the first chapter; perhaps this is the best way. Or you may look at the list of chapters, {viii} and try the one which seems to you most interesting. But when you have read that chapter, come back to the beginning and start over again.

Fairy tales and stories of marvels you will find described in Part III, also stories of heroes, and such stories as _Alice in Wonderland_, Kipling's stories, and Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, a great book telling of knights and their adventures.

The books in Part I are wonderfully interesting. In this Part you will find examples of some of the ways in which we may enjoy books of famous authors, for instance, the work of novelists like Dickens and Scott, and the plays of a great dramatist like Shakespeare. First, we may read some of their stories or plays; then we may learn of the lives of these authors, especially about that part of their lives when they were young which is always interesting; and finally, we can read of the world as it was when these writers lived in it and of the effect their work has had on this world of ours.