American Men of Action

h rather sit down with a good story. But have you ever thought w

of their careers which marked some great success or failure; and he tries to make them so life-like and natural that we will half-believe they are real people, and that the things he tells about really happened. Sometimes, to accomplish this, he even takes the place of one of his own characters, and tells the story in the first person, as Dickens does in "David Copperfield." That is ca

ographies of real people, which ought to be all the more interesting because they are true instead of make-believe? Well, in the first place, because most of us have never tried to read biography in the right way, and so think it tiresome and uninteresting. Haven't you, more than once, made up your mind that you wouldn't like a thing, just from the look of i

dialogue, as a story is, and there are no illustrations, only pictures of crabbed-looking people, and so you

is a flesh-and-blood personality, while the other is merely a name. This is because the average biographer apparently does not comprehend that his first duty is to make his subject seem alive, or lacks the art to do it; and so produces me

thought; he tries to realize him thoroughly, and then, reconstructing the scenes through which he moved, interprets him for us. He endeavors to give us the rounded impression of a human being-o

o show us the real man, not hiding his imperfections and yet giving them no more prominence than they really bore in his life; which will realize that to the man nothing was of importance except the growth of his spirit, and that to us not

dly written biography may be colored and vitalized. Try it-try to see the man you are reading about as an actual human being; make him come out of the pages of the book and stand before you; give him a personality. Watch for his humors, his mistakes, his failings-be sure he had them, however exalted he may have been-they will help to make him human. The spectacle of Washington, riding forward in a towering rage at the battle of Monmouth, has done more to make him rea

lse have inherited wealth and inherited position counted for so little as in America. Again, we have had no wars of greed or ambition, unless the war with Mexico could be so called. We have, at least, had no tyrants-instead, we have witnessed the spectacle, unique in history, of a great general winning his country's freedom, and then disbanding his army and retiring to his

. And yet, neither Columbus, nor Washington, nor Lincoln was what we call a genius-a genius, that is, in the sense in which Shakespeare or Napoleon or Galileo was

ible or above temptation; not different in that they never made mistakes; but different in that they each of them possessed an inward vision of the true and the eternal, while mo

he pettiness of everyday affairs and which disregards them for greater things. They live in the world, indeed, but in a world modified and colored by the divine ferment within them. There are some who claim that America has never prod

n form of government, established with no little fear and uncertainty by the Fathers, has, with all its defects, received triump

uthors and artists and scientists, who write great books, or paint great pictures or make great discoveries, and this sort of greatness will be considered in a future volume; for all there has been room for in this one is the story of the lives of America's great "

s sinking ship; there is Lawrence, whose last words are still ringing down the years; there is Nathan Hale, immortalized by his lofty bearing beneath the scaffold; there is Robert Gould Shaw,

ext has been kept free of dates, because great men are of all time, and, compared with the deeds themselves, their dates are of minor importance. But a summar

ion of the man and what he did. From the facts as given, however, he has drawn his own conclusions, with some of which, no doubt, many people will disagree. But he has tried to paint the men truly, in a few strokes, as they appeared to him, without seeking to conceal their weaknesses, but

asted their days in fighting wind-mills, or in doing things which had afterwards to be undone. Only through the vista of the years do we get a true perspective, just as only from a distance can we see which peaks of the mountain-range loom highest. But even the mist of years cannot dim essential

y. Knowledge always gives pleasure in just that way-by a wider understanding. Indeed, that is the principal aim of education: to enable the individual to get the most out of life by broadening his horizon, so that he sees more and understands more than he could do if he remained ignorant. And since you are an American, you will need

Spaniards and Englishmen work out their destinies in his pages. The story of Columbus and of the early explorers will be found in John Fiske's "Discovery of America," a book written simply and interestingly, but without Parkman's insight and wizardry of style-which, indeed, no other American historian can equal. A little book by Charles F. Lummis, called "The Spanish Pioneers," al

tatesmen" series, where, of course, the lives of the principal statesmen are also to be found. Not all of them, nor, perhaps, even most of them are worth reading by the average boy or girl. There is no especial reason why the life of any man should be studied in detail after he has ceased to be a factor in history. Of the Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Jack

ton; and you can learn about the battles of the Civil War from any good history of the United States. There is a series called the "Great Commanders Series," which tells the story, in detail, of the lives of American commanders on land and sea, but there is no reason why you should read any of them, with the exception of Lee, Farragut, and possibly Grant, tho

find Elbert Hubbard's "Little Journeys," which give flashlight portraits of statesmen and soldiers and

dore Parker had a wrong idea about reading, for once upon a time he undertook to read all the books in a library, beginning at the first one and proceeding along shelf after shelf. He never finished the task, of course, because he found out, after a while

lations as we gaze up at the heavens on a cloudless night. None but a lawyer need spend his time reading law-books, but most of us want to know the broad principles upon which justice is administered. No one but an economist need bo

You have no idea how the habit of right reading will grow upon you, and what a delightful and valuable habit it will prove to be. Like any other good habit, it takes pains at first to establish, an effort of will and self-control. But that very effort