ive, just as only from a distance can we see
which peaks of the mountain-range loom highest. But even the mist of
years cannot dim essential heroism and nobility of achievement. Indeed,
it enhances them; the voyage of Columbus seems to us a far greater thing
than his contemporaries thought it; Washington is for us a more
venerable figure than he was for the new-born Union; and Lincoln is just
coming into his own as a leader among men.

Every boy and girl ought to try to gain as true and clear an idea as
possible of their country's history, and of the men who made that
history. It is a pleasant study, and grows more and more fascinating as
one proceeds with it. The great pleasure in reading is to understand
every word, and so to catch the writer's thought completely. Knowledge
always gives pleasure in just that way--by a wider understanding.
Indeed, that is the principal aim of education: to enable the individual
to get the most out of life by broadening his horizon, so that he sees
more and understands more than he could do if he remained ignorant. And
since you are an American, you will need especially to understand your
country. You will be quite unable to grasp the meaning of the references
to her story which are made every day in conversation, in newspapers, in
books and magazines, unless you know that story; and you will also be
unable properly to fulfil your duties as a citizen of this Republic
unless you know it.

For the earliest years, and, more especially, for the story of the
deadly struggle between French and English for the possession of the
continent, the books to read above all others are those of Francis
Parkman. He has clothed history with romantic fascination, and no one
who has not read him can have any adequate idea of the glowing and
life-like way in which those Frenchmen and Spaniards and Englishmen work
out their destinies in his pages. The story of Columbus and of the early
explorers will be found in John Fiske's "Discovery of America," a book
written simply and interestingly, but without Parkman's insight and
wizardry of style--which, indeed, no other American historian can equal.
A little book by Charles F. Lummis, called "The Spanish Pioneers," also
gives a vivid picture of those early explorers. The story of John Smith
and William Bradford and Peter Stuyvesant and William Penn will also be
found in Fiske's histories dealing with Virginia and New England and the
Dutch and Quaker colonies. Alm