Some day you should plan to visit a great library and ask to be shown facsimiles of a few of the famous Acts by which liberties have been won and our government has been assured. One of the greatest Acts in the history of the English-speaking world is the Great Charter obtained in King John's time, 1215, and signed by him and many of the barons. Be sure to see a facsimile of this, if you can, and read especially clause 40. {178} "To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse, or delay right or justice." The Confederation Act of the Dominion of Canada, or the British North America Act, as it is properly called, is dated 1867. Its plainness, simplicity and scrupulous fairness make it worthy of admiration. In Charlottetown, the capital of the Province of Prince Edward Island, set in the assembly hall of the Parliament Buildings, is a tablet to mark the place where the Fathers of Confederation met and deliberated. These are the words which you may read on the tablet, as well as the names of the men who resolved that there should be a Dominion of Canada: In the Hearts and Minds of the Delegates who Assembled In this Room, Sept. 1st, 1864 Was born the Dominion of Canada. ------ Providence being Their Guide They Builded Better than they Knew. {179} CHAPTER XXVI HISTORIES It will take us a little while even to imagine how many important books there are in which famous historians have written of history and politics. Why should so many books need to be written about history? Because in this way we are able to trace the long, fascinating story of how mankind--men and women, your fathers and mothers, their fathers and mothers, and so on back for a thousand generations--has been gradually gaining in knowledge and growing, we trust, if even only a very little, more kind and more just. But let us forget all this for a few minutes. It is a good time to look about our treasure house, and see, or reckon up, as it were, what we have found in it. If we had to write a fairy tale about books, we could easily imagine that all the famous books in the world were kept in a great, very beautiful palace, and that books of different kinds were arranged in halls, galleries and great rooms which had been assigned to them. There might very well be a special, beautiful, walled garden, belonging to the palace, for fairy tales, myths, fables and such books. What a wonderful, great room, or rather series {180} of great rooms, must be kept for stories and novels! And exquisite galleries, with vaulted roofs, and open courts, where fountains play,--the water falling with a pleasant sound into marble basins,--and with beautiful statues in the courts, we will choose for songs, ballads, and great poetry. Famous books of history, political speeches, lives of great men, books of travel and discovery, may be arranged in a stately hall, with alcoves, stained glass windows, and marble busts of some of the great men that we read about.