But people felt much the same, loved and hated, laughed and sorrowed, as they do nowadays. There was the same struggle for daily bread among the poor, and the rich lived as sumptuously as they knew how; people traveled, hunted, played, and studied then as now. So they can be re-created for us, in the midst of their so different surroundings and problems, because we are all human and related.
It is somewhat difficult to choose among all the many periods of history that have been turned into story by the writers. Ancient Greek, and Roman, and Persian, and Biblical times have produced their share of fiction, as have the shifting scenes in Italy and the tumultuous centuries in France.
But, tempting as these certainly are, I am going to leave them, for the present at least, and devote my attention to England and America, beginning with the Norman Conquest in 1066. This marked the birth of the complex English race, and therefore of our own. And it seems to me that it will be extremely interesting to begin with some stories of those far-away wild days when Norseman and Saxon and Norman fought their battles and struggled upward into a united race, and then to go on gradually through the centuries, taking up one interesting book after another, stories of the old times of chivalry, of the feudal state, of the “spacious times of great Elizabeth,” on to Cromwell and the Cavaliers and the Pretender, following the thread of fiction till it leads us to our own land, among the settlers of its East and West, and so on down to our own day.
Sometimes there will be a number of delightful books having to do with an especially vital time in history, and sometimes, of course, it will be hard to find more than one; but, oddly enough, the entire great lapse of time is practically covered by the story-writers old and new. There is no long gap.
The reading of such a line of books ought to be a help to you in your study of history. Often you will be able to discover mistakes the story-writers have made—but that will only make it more interesting. You will become a critic of the story from the historical standpoint, at the same time that your study of authenticated fact is made alive and vivid to you by the imagination of the romance. And you will surely be delighted to discover that history is no such dry affair as it occasionally appears to be in your school-books. Fun and frolic, intrigue, danger, courage, and excitement have crowded all the centuries, and your story-writer has found these entertaining things where the historian has missed them.
These books must necessarily be for the older among you, boys and girls in your ’teens, who like a good story, certainly, but who are beginning to be interested in the truth about this world and its people, and who do not mind helping out your school work with your home fun. Keeping your mind alert and keen is a more important thing than cramming it with facts. And I believe that you will find the list of books I shall talk about will do just that for the history part of your minds. The facts, too, will stick all the better for such a story background. If your hero does a noble thing at some particular siege, or barely escapes with his life from the beleagured town, or goes-on a perilous mission between two opposing armies, you will be far more apt to remember what the history says of that same siege, or town, or those armies, than if you did not have a warm, personal interest in these matters, an interest your fiction friend has aroused in you.
So it seems to me your teachers might be interested in such a course of reading, and would like to know just the books you have found to go with your study. Perhaps they will at times suggest others to you; perhaps they will enjoy reading yours.
Possibly, too, and I should like that very much, you yourselves will have stories to suggest to me. If you knew of some fine, exciting book on a particular period in English or American history, no matter how little known the period might be, why could n’t you send me the title, so that all the readers of St. NicHotas could enjoy it with you?
It is impossible for me, with the best will in the world, to know all such books, and I might miss something excellent—which would be too bad! So speak right up, if you have any suggestion you care to make, and I will be most thankful, and glad to tell my readers from whom the title has come.
It may take most of the year to tell about the various books I have in mind, and which will follow each other month by month according to their date in history. Then, if the idea works out nicely, we may take up this story side of the world’s life in other countries.
You will find there is no country or people you can turn to whose history does not give the most superb opportunities to the writers of adventure and romance—opportunities that have been taken advantage of time and time again, if we only knew it, and that are still being made use of by writers to-day. I shall not confine myself to the older authors, but will tell you about the newest one as well, if his story is a good one.
Many of you will have passed the point in history to which the earlier among these books are related, but it will be almost as interesting to381
