My neighbour took the book gingerly, read the title and glanced at the cover, upon which were pictured in vivid colours three desperate-looking gentlemen in black masks, holding up a train. “And you are reading this--together?” he asked. “Yes,” said I; “taking turns at it, he a chapter and I a chapter.” My neighbour shrugged his shoulders and returned the volume, dusting his fingers. “Don’t you think he would get to this sort of stuff soon enough--without you helping him?” “He arrived there to-day,” I said; “and I’m there with him.” There you have it--the great difference of viewpoint: my neighbour looking at it from where he stands and I looking at it from the standpoint of my boy. My neighbour convinced that I was starting my beloved son on the highroad to a criminal career; I calm and confident, and cocksure that I am doing what is best for the boy. And I guess if we were to take the vote of Parenthood on the issue, my side would go down to overwhelming defeat. Now, my father says that up to the time he departed from the parental roof there were only two books in the home that he was permitted to read--the Bible and Foxe’s “Martyrs.” From his tenth to his seventeenth year he was actually starving, he said, for the want of stories of adventure. Once, when he was fourteen, a departing visitor left a copy of “Scottish Chiefs.” This he seized upon and was devouring it in the attic when discovery by his stern pater cut him off in the middle of a most exciting battle. The book was confiscated and he was soundly chastised. “And do you know,” adds my father ruefully, “it was three years before I learned how that fight came out!” Perhaps that’s why he gave me a freer hand in my selections when I was a kid. He did, anyway. All that he required was that it must be free from any suggestion of the obscene and of sacrilege. Like most boys I began my independent reading with “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Arabian Nights” and books of the sort that boys usually receive as gifts. From these I jumped to the nickel and dime variety. There were one or two good juvenile magazines coming into the home, but they were not sufficient. I waded through all the “Smart Aleck” books, including “Peck’s Bad Boy.” I took the thrills with the ten-cent detective heroes of the Old Sleuth and Nick Carter type, and revelled in the more or less historical exploits of David Crockett, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill. At fourteen I had run the gamut of cheap literature. I do not mean that I read every “penny-dreadful” in existence, for the list is endless--there is a new one every day. But I had “got my skin full” and the stuff began to pall. After reading a good number of these books, even a boy feels their want of the convincing quality. He feels, too, their sameness and their unrealness.