the present juncture of the world in writing on
the Lost Art of Reading is that all the other arts are lost, the great
self-delights. As they have all been lost together, it has been
necessary to go after them together, to seek some way of securing
conditions for the artist, the enjoyer and prophet of human life, in our
modern time. At the bottom of all great art, it is necessary to believe,
there has been great, believing, free, beautiful living. This is not
saying that inconsistency, contradiction, and insincerity have not
played their part, but it is the benediction, the great Amen of the
world, to say this,--that if there has been great constructive work
there has been great radiant, unconquerable, constructive living behind
it. There is but one way to recover the lost art of reading. It is to
recover the lost art of living. The day we begin to take the liberty of
living our own lives there will be artists and seers everywhere. We will
all be artists and seers, and great arts, great books, and great readers
of books will flock to us.

* * * * *

Well, here we are, Gentle Reader. We are rounding the corner of the last
paragraph. Time stretches out before us. On the great highroad we stand
together in the dawn--I with my little book in hand, you, perhaps, with
yours. The white road reaches away before us, behind us. There are
cross-roads. There are parallels, too. Sometimes when there falls a
clearness on the air, they are nearer than I thought. I hear crowds
trudging on them in the dark, singing faintly. I hear them cheering in
the dark.

But this is my way, right here. See the hill there? That is my next one.
The sun in a minute. You are going my way, comrade?... You are not going
my way? So be it. God be with you. The top o' the morning to you. I pass
on.

Our European Neighbours

Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON

12 deg.. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20
By Mail 1.30

I--FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By HANNAH LYNCH.

"Miss Lynch's pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive. Her
style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without any drawback
of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs strongly and evenly
between walls. It is at once distinguished and useful.... Her five-page
description (not dramatization) of the grasping Paris landlady is a
capital