--tender toward the bashful? --gentle toward those who are cold and reserved? --merciful to those whose actions draw ridicule upon themselves? In conversation, do I recollect those to whom I am speaking, avoid irritating them, keep myself in the background, talk little myself and listen attentively to them? If I can put to myself each of the tests Cardinal Newman offers in these few pages and can feel myself ring true under each, then may I hope to call myself a gentleman. _Adventures in Lilliput_ (Volume V, page 8) In _Gulliver's Travels_ Swift has given us a wonderful work in constructive imagination. As has been said elsewhere, the imagination works with the ideas which are present in the mind. It creates nothing, but it may enlarge, diminish or recombine ideas with an infinity of form. In _Adventures in Lilliput_ Swift has used largely the reducing power of his imagination. If he has been accurate, he has reduced everything in the same proportion. An interesting study of this phase of the story may be made by means of questions, which may be answered by reading the text, or by reasoning from the facts given. In the following exercise, questions and comments are combined in such a way as to assist a boy or girl to verify or disprove the accuracy of Swift's work. A similar exercise, to illustrate the opposite extreme, may be based upon _Adventures in Brobdingnag_ (page 54). It is hoped, too, that the questions may suggest a method for interpreting other selections. When Gulliver awoke and found himself bound (page 10), he felt something alive moving on his body. Bending his eyes downward as much as he could he saw it was a human creature not six inches high. We are at liberty to suppose that Gulliver was a man of ordinary height, that is to say, not six feet high. If the Lilliputian was "not six inches high," what was the ratio of height between Gulliver and his miniature captors? If, then, Gulliver is twelve times the size of one of his captors, we have a standard of comparison. How long a bow would a man use? How long would be the arrow that fitted that bow? How long would the bows and arrows of the Lilliputians be? Would an arrow that size, fired with the force a Lilliputian could give, "prick like a needle," and if there were many of them would they set a man "a-groaning with grief and pain"? If a man were lying flat on his back could he turn his eyes down so as to see a pencil, not six inches high, placed upright on his breast? When a man's face was turned two inches to the left, how much of the ground would be concealed from his sight by his shoulder? How far can a man shoot an arrow? How far could a Lilliputian shoot an arrow? Would an arrow the size of a Lilliputian's falling from the height to which he could shoot it pierce the skin of a man?