Perhaps your sister is just waiting to show you that girls can play checkers better than boys can--"So there!" Or some of your friends have come in for a game of dominoes or authors or snap or parcheesi or stage coach or pussy-wants-a-corner, or to try that new song you learned last week; and you will be surprised how quickly the time flies away and bedtime or study hour comes. Most evenings, however, you will probably get out your favorite magazine, or that good story that you are reading, and you will all sit around the big lamp on the center table and go off on adventures to the uttermost parts of the earth, with the best and most lasting friends that you will ever make--friends who will never grow tired of you and will always come when you want them and are always willing to talk or play--the people that live in books. Be sure to pick out the best of them for your chums--the bravest and the kindest and the most courteous, and the cleanest and the most honorable. You have the whole world to choose from; and it is never worth your while to get acquainted with cheap, badly behaved, second-rate people when you can have your pick of the best. Your mother and your father and your teacher will help you to choose, and you will soon find that what they call "good literature" is good stories, and about the right sort of men and women and boys and girls--the kind that you would like to know, and that you would want to be like. Once try it, and you find that you like that kind of reading better than you do the cheap, slangy, trashy stuff, just as you like, and never get tired of, good bread and butter and roast beef and apples and milk and cream and pudding and pie. Good sound stories of home life and adventure and travel are just as important in making your minds wholesome and happy as these good foods are in keeping your bodies strong and healthy. Be sure that the paper of the books and magazines you read is white and _not_ glossy, and is fairly thick and firm; for this makes them much easier to read and strains your eyes less. See, too, that the type is large and clear; for small, close type and yellow or shiny paper are very hard on the eyes. Be sure, of course, when you sit down to read _not_ to sit with your face to the lamp and your head bending forward; but settle yourself in a comfortable chair with your back to the light, and hold your book so that you can keep your chin up and your head erect while you read. You can breathe better, and read better, and enjoy what you read better in this position than in any other. Even if you have sums or writing to do, it is better to sit with your back, or at least your left side, toward the light; and often you will find it a great help to sit down with your back to the light in a large easy chair and do your writing on a big, thin book, or light piece of board, on a cushion on your knee.