THIS

INTRODUCTION.

HIS little Book speaks for itself and hardly needs an introduction, and yet it may not seem unsuitable that one who has been interested in its compilation should say a few words about its purpose and idea.

Some books are teachers, and come to us with systematic and well ordered truth; other books are friends and bring to us suggestions. We recognize at once the difference between the teacher and the friend. The two characters may be united in one man and yet they are separate when in our thought. We value the teacher for his truth; we value the friend for his personality.

The books which come to us as friends have something which is almost personality for us,

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heard the sound of their voices and felt the pressure of their hands.

And the most notable quality of such books is their suggestiveness. They bring their thought and give it to us not as men bring their treasures to a warehouse, laying them down there upon the floor as on a foreign, unrelated substance, but as you bring the spark of fire to a pile of wood which has within itself the power of burning and turning into fire. It is not the fullness of their hands which makes them welcome. It is the delicacy and discrimination of the finger which they lay upon some spring in us and set some of our nature free.

This book, I fancy, aspires to be the friend of men and women, and so it must be judged by its suggestiveness. If it does what it hopes to do, it will show that it has the qualities which belong to all suggestive men and things; it will illustrate anew the essential nature of suggestiveness which is always interesting.

Let me mention two or three truths which are involved in the very fact that there are suggestive books and men books and men at whose touch human natures start into life and thought which often far outgoes the book or man that touched them.

1. First, it implies a human nature full of mysterious and rich resources. You think that you have made a full survey of your own life and have an inventory of your possible powers, when sometime the wise word of a sage or of a child falls on you and some spring flies back, some door flies open, and you are thinking in new directions, living another life which you have never thought that you could live. Whenever that has once happened to a man, he always must think of himself expectantly and reverently, not knowing what other yet unopened chambers there may be in his life.

2. Again, suggestiveness in books and men, with the corresponding power of receiving suggestions in the men whom they touch, involves