In the species Tales of Mere Wonder, we mean to classify those stories of marvels that are told with the simple purpose of astonishing. The adventures of Sinbad the Sailor are typical. He comes upon a bird's egg, for instance, which he at first mistakes for the dome of a cathedral, or walks in a valley covered with diamonds the size of apples. The "Persian Tales" like the Arabian "Thousand and One Nights" are stories of wonder and enchantment. Though they are very old, many of them much older than their written form and traceable to the traditions of various countries, these Oriental stories as we have them to-day are not folk-tales in the strict sense of the term. They are put into a frame-work and are acknowledged to be narratives of ingenuity. The two earlier sets, translated into French, produced many imitations. Besides these there are the "Tartar Tales," the "Chinese Tales," "Mogol Tales," the "Turkish Tales," and so on. The most literary and perhaps the most valuable from the point of view of real thinking displayed in them are the very modern Oriental stories of George Meredith, published under the title "The Shaving of Shagpat." They are all wonder tales though extremely philosophical. Robert Louis Stevenson has given us the "New Arabian Nights." [Suggestions for writing] To write one of these exaggerations you need only recall your own or other persons' attempts at the fireside when the stock of folk stories has run low. You address your efforts to your eight and ten-year-old brothers who have got past Jack-the-Giant-Killer and are in the stage of development that the people of the twelfth century were to whom Marie de France told her fables and her stories of mere wonder. The fine ladies and gentlemen of Henry the Second's day loved to hear of costly robes and magic carpets and jewelled beds worth half a kingdom, that came at the touch of a ring or at the murmuring of a secret phrase. Unfortunate princes, too, they enjoyed being told about, who allowed themselves to be misled by wily councilors, and lost for a time their kingdoms; beautiful princesses who sat enchanted in gorgeous underground palaces, waiting their deliverers; wonderful plants with otherwhere unheard-of properties; and animals with stupendous powers, like the monstrous birds that the Arabian writer says carried Nimrod through the air in a cage or with out-stretched wings sheltered Solomon's army from the sun. Chaucer, you know, began and "left half told The story of Cambuscan bold, Of Camball and of Algarsife, And who had Canace to wife, That owned the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride."