dividual, be absorbed and assimilated even when the scope and moral of the Parable are missed or but dimly apprehended. The care bestowed on the literary form, if less apparent than that employed in the selection of the vignettes, will nevertheless, I trust, not have been thrown away. The consummate artist to whose friendship I owe these exquisite engravings, has, the purchaser must admit, redeemed any failure on my part. W. P. G. ORANGE, NEW JERSEY, June 29, 1897. THE APPRECIATION WHAT," I asked my young hearers at the close of a series of readings lasting over a couple of years, "was my object in writing these Parables?" The following are some of the unprompted answers committed to paper in my absence, and signed with many French, German, Danish, Hungarian, and Italian names, as well as British and American: He thought it might make people better and like. to do right, and teach young children to do right and improve their minds. I think you wrote these stories so that other people could write them, and to teach us to write them, and to be good men and women, and to think and to be honest and speak nice, and to be kind to other people. I think you wrote the stories that we should grow honest and be good. He wrote the stories for us to learn to spell and think and live pleasant and to be noble. xii THE APPRECIATION To see if we cared enough about them to listen and remember them; and to teach us a great many things, to help us to spell and to give us knowledge in a great many things. To help us in school so as we can get along better with our lessons. 1. To refresh our minds from school-books all the time. 2. To tell us about men that became famous, and how. 3. To show the ways of different people than us, as: the Chinese, how they dress, eat and live. So we could know more about foreign lands, and how the people do things in them, and so we could know more about the famous men, and remember the stories that he read to us. I think he thought that they would help us along in our school work and make us work diligently. He wrote them for us to learn how to write a story with good sense. That we should learn to write out of our own head. Because he thought the children would like them, and probably make the children remember things better. You read the stories to us so when we read a story out of a book we should think about it. To teach us to think, and if you do not come out first do not give up, but try, try again. To teach us something about carelessness and things that teach us. To teach us to think what we are doing. TABLE OF CONTENTS I.- EMERSON; or, Tenderness for Living Vignette: Portrait of Emerson; from a II. THE HORSE OF SELENË; or, Kindness to Vignette: Horse's head from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon at Athens, now in the British Museum; from a pho- PAGE Vignette: Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rous- seau; from a photograph of the pastel by Maurice Quentin de la Tour, in the V.- NOTRE Dame de Paris; or, The Mob . Vignette: The Cathedral of Notre Dame; 4I |