Let us find justification of each tale, not in its historical accuracy, but in the fact that "it helps the ear to listen when the horns of Elf-land blow." It is for this that we will read them,—that we may awake refreshed as from a plunge in the springs of Mount Olympus. If they do not revivify our jaded senses, and awake our tired vision to the beauties of character and nature of the world in which we live, we may lay them aside and be sure that the author does not measure up to the proper standard. The love of a story is deeply ingrained in the human heart. The baby, before he can read, listens, fascinated, to the paraphrase of some classic fairy tale related by his mother; the minnesinger of old in the mediæval castle charmed the tired fighters with tales of greater love and chivalry; the medicine man recounted to the savage tribe the sagas of their ancestral struggles and triumphs; we all love to hear the man talk who has been to strange lands and seen strange peoples. It is the cry of human nature for accounts of the doings of men in worlds in which we live not that makes the tremendous demand for the novels of the day. Let us remember, however, that the old story tellers, the medicine men and the mothers with their infants at their knees told tales that really fed souls in warming the hearts and awakening the intellects of their eager listeners. The plumed knight buckled on his armor with more vigor, and attempted, the next day, to outdo the deeds of the minnesinger’s hero; the child lived in fairyland and found a background for his playing and dreaming; the savage warrior felt more keen to go upon the warpath to uphold the tradition of his ancestors who were watching him from their places in the Happy Hunting Ground. These stories were of the staff of life to their hearers. How many of the novels you read bring nothing but the means of wasting an hour? Grown people to-day must find their stories in books: there do not frequently come in our way travellers who have been overcome with the mystery of far-off places; we have no longer medicine men who sing of the glories of our ancestors; we perforce must turn for our minnesinger to the printed page. Let that page be worth while! Insist upon reading a story that means something; either that gives you a more sympathetic understanding of your fellow men, or an inspiration and refreshment by allowing a glimpse through that "magic casement" which opens to the world of Kings and Princes, Castles and Feudal Keeps, or to the mountain where dwelt the Giant or to the seas upon which sailed the Pirates of your boyhood.