ould
wander about in Ireland, you would see in many a little cottage people
gathered around the fire, telling over and over the stories that their
grandmothers had told them of his kind heart and his peculiar ways.

"The Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver's Travels"
were all written by men of the British Isles, but our fourth book,
"Don Quixote," was written by a Spaniard named Cervantes. He was a
soldier part of his life and as valiant a fighter as his own hero. For
five years he was a prisoner of war; he was poor and sick and in one
trouble after another; but he was always brave and cheerful and
good-humored. In his day, the Spaniards read few books except queer
old romances of chivalry, the sort of tale in which a great champion
goes out with his squire to wander over the world in search of
adventures. He makes thieves give back what they have stolen, he sets
prisoners free, he rescues beautiful maidens who have been dragged
away from their homes; in short, he roams about making people do
whatever he thinks proper. Sometimes he takes a castle all by himself,
sometimes he gets the better of a whole group of champions or a host
of giants or even a dragon or two. Cervantes's book makes fun of such
tales as these. His hero attacks a terrible company of giants standing
on a plain all ready to destroy him; but the giants prove to be
windmills, and their sails give him many a heavy blow before his fight
with them is over. Another time, he finds the giants in his very
bedroom; and the courageous knight cuts off their heads as fast as he
can swing his sword. Blood flows like water; only when a light is
brought, it does not prove to be blood but--well, it is not fair to
tell the rest of the story. We must let Cervantes do that for himself
in "Don Quixote's Battle with the Giants."

The fifth book, the "Arabian Nights," is a mystery. We do not know who
composed the stories or who brought them together in one collection.
We cannot even tell where they came from. The most we can say
positively is that two hundred years ago a Frenchman traveling through
the East came across them in some Arabian manuscripts and translated
them into French. Whether they came in the first place from Arabia or
Persia or India, whether they were composed five or six hundred years
ago or at least one thousand, no one can say. Many learned scholars
have tried in vain to answer these questions; but if we had to choose
between having t