As the interest in such a life-history deepens, the lessons it evolves come out with convincing and overwhelming power. The effect of a great novel or drama is more intense and lasting than any sermon. The elements of thought and feeling have been accumulating energy and momentum through all the scenes, and when contracted into a single current at the close they sweep forward with the strength of a river. A masterpiece works at the foundations of our sympathies and moral judgments. To bring ourselves under the spell of a great author and to allow him, hour after hour and perhaps for days in succession, to sway our feelings and rule far up among the sources of our moral judgments, is to give him great opportunity to stamp our character with his convictions. We seldom spend so many hours in close companionship with a living friend as with some master of the art of character-delineation. Children are susceptible to this strong influence. Many of them take easily to books, and many others need but wise direction to bring them under the touch of their formative influence. A book sometimes produces a more lasting effect upon the character and conduct of a child than a close companion. Nor is this true only in the case of book-lovers. It is probable that the great majority of children may feel the wholesome effect of such books if wisely used at the right time. To select a few of the best books as companions to a child, and teach him to love their companionship, is one of the most hopeful things in education. The boy or girl who reads some of our choice epics, stories, novels, dramas, and biographies, allowing the mind to ponder upon the problems of conduct involved, will receive many deep and permanent moral lessons. The realism with which the artist clothes his characters only strengthens the effect and makes them lasting food for thought in the coming years. Even in early childhood we are able to detect what is noble and debasing in conduct as thus graphically and naturally revealed, and a child forms an unerring judgment along moral lines. The best influence that literature has to bestow, therefore, may produce its effect early in tender years, where impressions are deep and permanent. There are many other elements of lasting culture-value in the study of literature, but first of all the deep and permanent truths taught by the classics are those of human life and conduct. George Willis Cooke gives clear and simple expression to the ethical force in poetry ("Poets and Problems," p. 46):--