en Hastings_ by Macaulay (Volume IX, page 32), and
in this volume are studies on that essay (page 248).

_The Boston Massacre_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a pleasing bit of
history which in this volume (page 370) is used as the basis of a study
in argument. You may prefer to read the studies first and arrange the
arguments for your sons or for yourself and your boy. It is surprising
into what different directions the argument will lead you and how many
interesting questions will arise which will make good subjects for
discussion. To make conversation worth while there is needed only
something interesting to talk about. To be a good talker is worth a
great deal to any young man and there is no better way to give him this
power than by conversing freely with him while he is young.

Moral instruction is difficult. A thousand little things tend to
neutralize it and there is an almost universal spirit of opposition to
moral teaching, on the part of youth. And yet it is easy to give moral
lessons in an indirect way that shall arouse no opposition and that
shall be effective for lifetime. _Journeys_ is full of what for lack of
a better name we call character-building literature. Some of it is
adapted to boys and girls of a very tender age and more of it to the
older children. _The Cubes of Truth_ (Volume VI, page 406), by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, is a beautiful little essay that expresses a great truth
in a way to impress it indelibly upon the memory of every person who
reads it. So clear is the language, so clever the idea that the
selection is read with absorbing interest, and so impressive is the
lesson that no real attention need be called to it. In reading it the
beauty of the language and the quaintness of the figure are the real
subjects of discussion, but all the time the great lesson is making its
subtle appeal. Cardinal Newman's _Definition of a Gentleman_ (Volume IV,
page 170) is more obviously a didactic selection, but here again the
definition is given so clearly and so forcibly that no possible offense
can be taken and the weight of the statements will produce their effect
without much comment.

In this connection it should be necessary merely to call attention to
the chapter on character-building, to be found in this volume. In
preparing that chapter the writer had in mind children of all ages and
both sexes, but it will be an easy matter for you to select the things
which you know will appeal to your son.

In f