But far stronger stories than those just mentioned are the great Russian tales of Tolstoi and Turgenev. Tolstoi is better known by his great novels, “The Cossacks,” “War and Peace,” and “Anna Karénina.” But “The Long Exile,” “What Men Live By,” and other short tales are unsurpassed for dramatic force. Turgenev’s “First Love” is a rather long short story, but an intensely interesting one. “A Lear of the Steppes” is regarded as his classic. But there are others equally good. Of modern writers of short stories Kipling is doubtless the greatest; but his early books such as “Plain Tales from the Hills,” “Soldiers Three,” “Phantom Rickshaw,” “Wee Willie Winkie,” etc., are probably better than the later ones, though in the later books a strong story will be found here and there. No greater short story has been published in modern times than Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and Gilbert Parker has published some excellent short stories in “Pierre and His People.” NOTE.--Many of the stories here referred to may be found in “A Selection from the World’s Greatest Short Stories,” edited by Sherwin Cody. CHAPTER XII. _CLASSIC STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE._ The boy or girl who has grown up without reading Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels is to be pitied; but it is to be presumed that there are few such. These books are good alike for young and old. For young children fairy tales are usually considered the first to become familiar with, and of these the best are Grimm’s and Hans Christian Andersen’s. There are many volumes variously edited, and all are fairly good. A modern fairy tale that is also a classic is Kingsley’s Water Babies, and even better are Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Kipling’s Jungle Book. There are also Æsop’s Fables. But when boys and girls get a little older they want to find what is to them a really good book. I know none better than Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women. It is the story of four girls and a boy; but boys will like it almost as well as the girls will. Boys will be especially interested in the lives of great men, and of these none is better than Franklin’s Autobiography. He tells just how he worked, and what he did, and how he succeeded, and tells it in simple, natural English. And next to this one will like a good life of Washington or Lincoln, of which there are many. Hawthorne wrote many good stories for young people, and of these the simplest are his Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales from the ancient Greek, and his Biographical Stories of Great Men. But readers a little older will like even better such stories as “The Snow-Image,” “The Great Stone Face,” etc.