This ancient world of Greece and Rome is full of stimulus to the general reader, although he may have no knowledge either of Latin or Greek. More and more the colleges are abandoning the training in the classics and are substituting German or French or Italian for the old requirements of Greek and Latin. As intellectual training, the modern languages cannot compare with the classical, but in our day the intense competition in business, the struggle for mere existence has become so keen that it looks as though the leisurely methods of education of our forefathers must be abandoned. The rage for specializing has reached such a point that one often finds an expert mining or electrical engineer graduated from one of our great universities who knows no more of ancient or modern literature than an ignorant ditch-digger, and who cannot write a short letter in correct English. These things were not "required" in his course; hence he did not take them. And it is far more difficult to induce such a man to cultivate the reading habit than it is to persuade the man who has never been to college to devote some time every day to getting culture from the great books of the world. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS AND OTHER CLASSICS ORIENTAL FAIRY TALES AND GERMAN LEGENDS--THE ANCIENT ARABIAN STORIES AND THE NIBELUNGENLIED AMONG WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS. The gap between the ancient writers and the modern is bridged by several great books, which have been translated into all languages. Among these the following are entitled to a place: _The Arabian Nights_; _Don Quixote_, by Cervantes; _The Divine Comedy_, by Dante; _The Imitation of Christ_; _The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam_, _St. Augustine's Confessions_, and The _Nibelungenlied_. Other great books could be added to this list, such as _Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography_, _Boccaccio's Tales_, the _Analects of Confucius_ and _Mahomet's Koran_. But these are not among the books which one must read. Those that I have named first should be read by any one who wishes to get the best in all literature. And another reason is that characters and sayings from these books are so often quoted that to be ignorant of them is to miss much which is significant in the literature of the last hundred years. Whatever forms a part of everyday speech cannot be ignored, and the _Arabian Nights_, _Don Quixote_ and Dante's _Divine Comedy_ are three books that have made so strong an impression on the world that they have stimulated the imagination of hundreds of writers and have formed the text for many volumes. Dante's great work alone has been commented upon by hundreds of writers, and these commentaries and the various editions make up a library of over five thousand volumes. _The Arabian Nights_ has been translated from the original into all languages, although the primitive tales still serve to amuse Arabs when told by the professional story-tellers of today. [Illustration: