to make the welcome chills run up and down the boy's
back, he returns to the story for the pleasure he finds in the style of
Stevenson. In later years the boy will write better and speak better for
having read the story.

However, the parent may do much to help his child along by calling
attention to vivid figures of speech, to happy expressions of all kinds,
and to those graceful touches of humor and pathos that are so
characteristic of Andersen, Stevenson, Ruskin, Kingsley, and other great
writers for boys and girls. No child who can read well for himself is
too young to appreciate a good figure of speech if the comparison is
based upon something falling within his own experience. Who is so young,
or so old, for that matter, that he will not thrill a little at
Longfellow's lines:

"Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."

What does the poet say? "The stars appeared in the sky." In saying it
what does he make us feel? As we repeat the lines we see the immense
expanse of the heavens, and as we gaze, the sparkling dots of light
appear silently, slowly, one after another, just as beautiful flowers
appear as the early morning light gilds the green meadows. We think,
too, in the poet's fanciful way, that these are no common flowers, but
exquisite tokens of the loving care the angels have over us, and a
gentle reminder that always should we trust in them.

Often the highest sentiment is clothed in lines whose figures, most
beautiful in themselves, exalt the spirit as ordinary expressions could
never do. At the close of _The Chambered Nautilus_, Oliver Wendell
Holmes sings:

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"

Is it not well for the parent to lead his child to see such things in
literature, to search for them, and when they are found to treasure them
and bring them for mutual enjoyment into the family circle?

G. EMOTIONAL POWER

Fiction appeals strongly to feeling and stimulates the growth of that
series of great emotions that make so large a part of character. It may
excite ambition and a thirst for power or wealth or give an impulse to
labor and self-deni