a biography but more than a biography, for it gives not only a rich and illuminating life-story of our ambassador to England during the World War but an account, at the same time graphic and intimate, of the world-important events in which he played a vital part. Many of the letters are no less than a revelation of Anglo-American relations leading up to the entry of the United States into the war and of the influence of certain men—President Wilson, Colonel House, Lord Grey, Balfour and others—upon those relations. The work of Mr. Hendrick in the biography proper and in the connecting links between the letters (a small proportion of the whole book) is ably done but it is the letters themselves, with their vigor, their humor, their charm of style, that win for this book a place among biographies which are also literature—and thus a place in this course. So I might go on until I had named a hundred, and more than a hundred great American books, all of them marked by both durable matter and manner, books that not only get hold of the mind and heart, but which also reveal to us glimpses of the past and dreams of what the future of America shall be. But these, together with Bronson’s _Short history of American literature_, are the twelve which I have chosen for this program: (1) _The sketch book_ by Irving; (2) _The last of the Mohicans_, a romantic adventure by Cooper; (3) _American poems (1625-1892)_ edited by W. C. Bronson; (4) _Representative American short stories_ edited by Alexander Jessup; (5) the _Essays_ of Emerson (first series will be good); (6) _The scarlet letter_ by Hawthorne; (7) _The rise of Silas Lapham_ by Howells; (8) _Tom Sawyer_ by Mark Twain; (9) _The pit_ by Frank Norris; (10) _The gentle reader_ by Samuel McChord Crothers; (11) _Ethan Frome_ by Edith Wharton; (12) _The life and letters of Walter H. Page_ by Burton J. Hendrick. FOOTNOTES: [1] This story is found in the volume of _Representative American short stories_ edited by Alexander Jessup and published by Allyn and Bacon. See page 25. [2] Scribner. [3] Harcourt. [4] Houghton Mifflin. [5] Heath. [6] See page 13. BOOKS RECOMMENDED IN THIS COURSE THE SKETCH BOOK _Washington Irving_ THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS _James Fenimore Cooper_ AMERICAN POEMS (1625-1892) _W. C. Bronson_, Ed. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1912. $2.75 REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN SHORT STORIES _Alexander Jessup_, Ed. Allyn and Bacon, 1923. $4.00 ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ THE SCARLET LETTER _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM _William Dean Howells_ Houghton, 1885. $2.00 THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER _Mark Twain_ Harper, 1876. $2.25 THE PIT _Frank Norris_ Doubleday, 1903. $0.95