If one wants to follow out a certain subject, whether it be travel, history, or art, he can take up the reading of his Mentors in groups. Look at the schedule of 1913. In the varied program of the year's reading you will detect numbers that naturally belong together. You can select a set of Mentors that will take you on a trip to interesting places, with Mr. Dwight L. Elmendorf as a companion. If literature is a subject of interest to you, you can select Mentors on literary matters prepared under the advice of, and some of them written by, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie. Suppose that history is what you are after; Professor Albert Bushnell Hart gives you the "Story of America" in several numbers. It is hardly necessary to point out what Professor John C. Van Dyke has done for fine art in the numbers of The Mentor prepared under his direction. And so groups of Mentors on other subjects may be brought together out of the schedule. *** In preparing the schedule for 1914 we have taken thought not only for the wide scope of the whole year's plan, but for the treatment of special subjects in a way that will form natural groups. We have found this condition has met with favor, and it seems worth while to assure ourselves that all the readers of The Mentor appreciate it. We are told that some are gathering the numbers relating to a single subject together so as to have a small library on each subject available for reference. Not a bad idea. Imagine what an attractive set of volumes could be made out of twenty or thirty Mentors on travel by Mr. Elmendorf! Think what a beautiful and valuable set of books could be had by binding up the art numbers! Keep your back numbers. They are just as valuable as the ones to come. [Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL] _Taj Mahal_ ONE At the top of a precipice overhanging the River Jumna in India stands the most poetic mausoleum in the world. The Taj Mahal, "a dream in marble, designed by Titans and finished by jewelers," is the tomb built by Shah Jahan, the Mogul emperor, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, whom he called Taj-Bibi. She was the loveliest beauty of the Indies, and Shah Jahan loved her so passionately that he thought of no other woman while she lived and was lost in grief after her death. He vowed that her tomb should be the most beautiful building in the world. The Taj is of snow-white marble outside and jeweled mosaic within. It was planned by a Persian, Ustad Isa, who designed in the Persian rather than the Indian style of architecture. Twenty thousand men worked twenty-two years to finish it. In the center of a great square, paved with white marble and having a slender tower of the same stone at each corner, rises the memorial of Taj-Bibi--not merely a masterpiece of architecture, but also a perfect interpretation of womanly nature. The spirit of Mumtaz Mahal seems to have been carved into the marble.