Lively or exciting stories are so interesting that we are inclined to read too many of them, and to read them too carelessly. By so doing, we fail to get the highest pleasure reading can give, and never receive the great benefit that is ours for the taking. If we let our arms rest idle for a long time, they become weak and useless; if a boy takes no exercise he cannot expect to be a strong man. So, if he reads nothing that makes him exert his mind, he becomes a weakling in intellect and never feels the pure delight that the man has who can read in a masterful way a masterly selection.

As a matter of fact, history when well written is as fascinating as any story that ever was penned, and it has the merit of being true. Sometimes it is a little harder to read than the light things that are so numerously given us by magazines and story books, but no one shuns hard work where it yields pleasure. A boy will play football or tramp all day with a gun over his shoulder, and not think twice about the hard work he is doing. Reading history bears about the same relation to reading mild love stories and overdrawn adventures that football or skating bears to stringing beads.

Not all history is hard to read; in some of it the interest lies so close to the surface that it grips us with the first glance. Such is the kind we read in the beginning. The adventures of King Arthur, the Cid, Robin Hood, and other half mythical heroes are history in the making—the history that grew up when the world was young, and its great men were something like overgrown boys. That is why we who have boyish hearts like to read about them. Then Robert the Bruce, Caesar and Alexander are more like the men of to-day and appeal a little more strongly as we get more mature. And finally we have Washington, Lincoln, Lee and Grant as men nearer our own time, whose lives and deeds require our careful thought and our serious study, because they had to contend with the same things and overcome the same obstacles that confront us.

There is really no use in trying to tell just how and in what way history becomes interesting, and nobody cares to read a long article about history. What we older people would wish is merely this: that our young friends should begin to read history and so find out for themselves just how fascinating it is. We can perhaps give a word or two of warning that may save much hard work and many discouragements. Macaulay, Gibbon, Hume and others are great men, and in the tomes they have written are pages of exciting, stimulating narrative; yet one must read so many pages of heavy matter to find the interesting things that it is not worth the time and exertion a young person would need to give. On the other hand, there are writers like Parkman and Prescott who are always readable and entertaining.

The best way to learn to like history is to begin with such readable things as are put into these volumes, and then follow any line of interest that is discovered.

Franklin's description of Braddock's defeat is interesting in itself, and it calls attention to the French and Indian War and to the wonderful career of Franklin himself. These are lines of interest that you may follow out in histories or in works of reference.