in their minds; or
even touch with a light of romance some of the knightly virtues which
are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace and uninteresting
duties.

It is very hard to make the simple choices of life assume a noble or
an inspiring form. One sees long afterwards in later life how fine the
right choice, the vigorous resistance, the honest perseverance might
have been; but the worst faults of boyhood have something exciting and
even romantic about them--they would not be so alluring if they had
not--while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and
self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from
the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were
always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there
would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought
by sin and indolence.

I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old romantic form
for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediaeval atmosphere such as
belongs to the literary epic; some of the stories are pure fantasy;
but they all aim more or less directly at illustrating the stern
necessity of moral choice; the difficulty is to get children to
believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it will not do to
follow the delights of impulse. And one of the most pathetic parts of
a schoolmaster's life is that he cannot, however earnestly and
sincerely he may wish to do so, transfer his own experience to the
boys, or persuade them that, in the simple words of Browning, "It's
wiser being good than bad." It may be wiser but it is certainly
duller! and the schoolmaster has the horror, which ought never to be a
faithless despair, of seeing boys drift into habits of non-resistance,
and sow with eager hand the seed which must almost inevitably grow up
into the thorns and weeds of life. If the child could but grasp the
bare truth, if one could but pull away the veil of the years and show
him the careless natural joy ending in the dingy, broken slovenliness
of failure! But one cannot; and perhaps life would lose all its virtue
if one could.

One does not know, one cannot dimly guess, why all these attractive
opportunities of evil are so thickly strewn about the path of the
young in a world which we believe to be ultimately ruled by Justice
and Love. Much of it comes from our own blindness and hardness of
heart. Either we do not care enough ourselves, or we cannot risk the
unp