Rupert Hughes is an all around literary athlete. He was born in Missouri, on the thirty-first of January, 1872, studied at Western Reserve and later at Yale, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1899. He is of course best known as a novelist and playwright; his novel _The Thirteenth Commandment_ (1916) and his play _Excuse Me_ (1911) are among his most successful productions. His works in prose fiction are conscientiously realistic and the finest of them are accurate chronicles of metropolitan life; while his short stories, _In a Little Town_ (1917) are, like those of William Allen White, truthful both in their representation of village manners in the West, and in their recognition of spiritual values. In view of the "up-to-dateness" of Mr. Hughes's novels, it is rather curious that his one long poem _Gyges' Ring_ (1901), which was written during his student days at Yale, should be founded on Greek legend. Yet Mr. Hughes has been a student of Greek all his life, and has made many translations from the original. I do not care much for _Gyges' Ring_; it is hammered out rather than created. But some of the author's short poems, to which he has often composed his own musical accompaniment, I find full of charm. Best of all, I think, is the imaginative and delightful. WITH A FIRST READER Dear little child, this little book Is less a primer than a key To sunder gates where wonder waits Your "Open Sesame!" These tiny syllables look large; They'll fret your wide, bewildered eyes; But "Is the cat upon the mat?" Is passport to the skies. For, yet awhile, and you shall turn From Mother Goose to Avon's swan; From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam, And Mancha's mad-wise Don. You'll writhe at Jean Valjean's disgrace; And D'Artagnan and Ivanhoe Shall steal your sleep; and you shall weep At Sidney Carton's woe. You'll find old Chaucer young once more, Beaumont and Fletcher fierce with fire; At your demand, John Milton's hand Shall wake his ivory lyre. And learning other tongues, you'll learn All times are one; all men, one race; Hear Homer speak, as Greek to Greek; See Dante, face to face. _Arma virumque_ shall resound; And Horace wreathe his rhymes afresh; You'll rediscover Laura's lover; Meet Gretchen in the flesh. Oh, could I find for the first time The _Churchyard Elegy_ again! Retaste the sweets of new-found Keats; Read Byron now as then! Make haste to wander these old roads, O envied little parvenue; For all things trite shall leap alight And bloom again for you! Robert Munger, B.A., 1897, published in 1912 a volume called _The Land of Lost Music_. He is a lyric poet. Melody seems as natural to him as speech.