Read, that you may be able to mark, learn, and inwardly digest." It is
only natural that the boys and girls should read for a hundred reasons,
instead of for the one reason of an older day--the pursuit of happiness
in the mere reading itself. "How can you sit idly reading a book when
there are so many useful things you might be doing?" was the question
often put to the children of yesterday by their elders. To-day we feel
that the children can hardly do anything likely to prove more useful
than reading a book. Is not this because we have taught them, not only
to read, but to read for a diversity of reasons?

American children are so familiarly at home in the world of books, it
should not surprise us to find them occasionally taking rather a
practical, everyday view of some of the things read. A little girl
friend of mine chanced to begin her reading of Shakespeare during a
winter when her grown-up relatives were spending a large portion of
their leisure going to see stage representations of Shakespeare's plays.
She therefore heard considerable conversation about the plays, and about
the persons acting the chief roles in them. It happened that "As You
Like It" was one of the comedies being acted. The little girl was
invited to go to see it. "Who is going to be Orlando?" she inquired; she
had listened to so much talk about who "was," or was "going to be," the
various persons in the several dramas!

"But," she objected, when she was informed, "I think I've heard you say
he is not very tall. Orlando was _such_ a tall man!"

"Was he?" I ventured, coming in at that moment. "I don't remember that
about him. Who told you he was tall?"

"Why, it is in the book!" she exclaimed.

Every one present besought her to mention where.

"Don't you remember?" she said incredulously. "He says Rosalind is just
as high as his heart; that wouldn't be _quite_ up to his shoulder. And
she says she is _more than common_ tall! So he must have been
_'specially_ tall. Don't you remember?" she asked again, looking
perplexedly at our blank faces.

There are so many bonds of understanding between American children of
the present time and their grown-up relatives and friends. Is not one of
the best of these that which has come out of our national impulse toward
giving the boys and girls the books we love, "cut small"; and showing
them how to read those books as we read the larger books from which they
are made? "What kinds of books do American chi