fact is, and it behooves us to reckon with it, the average man, to whom we bear our credentials as missionaries, looks upon a book as having something biblical about it. To sit down deliberately and surrender himself to its chapters is a task he waves away with strangely mingled awe and dislike. So he misses the consecutive instruction, as delightful as profitable to an educated taste, which authors, publishers and librarians are ready and even anxious to impart. We hear a good deal in these days about the need of recreation, and not a word more than is true, but let us remember that the best recreation may consist in a simple change of work. Behold the arduous toil of the city lawyer, or banker, as on a holiday tour he climbs a peak of the Alps or the Adirondacks, or wades the chilly streams of Scotland or Canada a salmon rod in his hands. Why does he undergo fatigues so severe? Partly because they are freely chosen, partly because they are fatigues of an unwonted and therefore refreshing kind. So in the field before us to-day. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more fascinating when once its charms are recognized and entertained. Our public schools throughout the land prove that a true story of exploration, of invention or discovery, of heroism or adventure, has only to be well told to rivet a boy's attention as firmly as ever did Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island. When readers take up from instinctive appetite, or wise incitement, the best books about flowers or birds, minerals or trees, an art, a science, a research, they come to joys in new knowledge, in judgments informed and corrected, unknown to the tipplers and topers whose staple is the novel, good, bad and indifferent. And why, if we can help it, should public money ever be spent for aught but the public good?