PARTIAL LIST OF SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS:

Hon. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, President of the United States.
Hon. GROVER CLEVELAND, Ex-President of the United States.
Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, Senator from Massachusetts.
DAVID STARR JORDAN, Ex-President Leland Stanford, Jr.,
University.

Hon. JUSTIN MCCARTHY, Ex-Member of Parliament.
Gen. JOSEPH WHEELER, United States Army.
Admiral ROBLEY D. EVANS, United States Navy.
WILLIAM R. HARPER, President Chicago University.
JAMES J. HILL, President Great Northern Railroad.

H. H. VREELAND, President Metropolitan Street Railway.
Hon. SETH Low, Mayor of New York.

The EARL OF DUNRAVEN, Author of "The Great Divide," "The Upper Yellowstone," etc.

CAMILLE PREVOST, French Athletic Expert.

RAY STANNARD BAKER, Author and Journalist.

MARGARET E. SANGSTER, Author of "The Art of HomeMaking."

HERBERT WELSH, Editor of "City and State."

WILLIAM BLAIKIE, Author of "How to Get Strong and How to Stay So."

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, President Columbia University. JAMES B. ANGELL, President University of Michigan.

ANDREW LANG, Author.

JACOB A. RIIS, Author and Journalist.

ROBERT C. OGDEN, Partner of John Wanamaker.

GEORGE G. WILLIAMS, President Chemical National Bank.

H. N. HIGINBOTHAM, Marshall Field & Co.

Sir THOMAS LIPTON, London, England.

Dr. GEORGE F. SHRADY, Physician, New York.

Rev. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, Pastor Plymouth Church.
WALTER CAMP, Author "College Sports," etc.

SARAH K. BOLTON, Biographical Writer.

And more than two hundred other well-known writers and

successful business men.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

I

AM to give the reader, in a few pages, some idea of the plans and wishes that have led to the preparation of this Library, which provides so rich and varied a store of profitable reading on the most practical topics.

I do not speak of myself, but I can say of the other gentlemen who have been united in making these volumes, largely of special articles and from the writings of American and foreign authors of established reputation, that the reader could not have better guides. And our work has not been any helterskelter or splash-dash work, hastily or carelessly attempted. We have consulted frequently and with care. We have rejected without pity where there was cause. And we have not been trying to please our own fancies first. We have tried to be of most service to the reader. Our business has been to render essential help to that reader, by giving him the wisest counsels of men and women eminent for having attained their success by acting on the principles they lay down. Those principles are here directed to the larger education of all who desire to succeed, not only in business, but in the spheres of culture, achievement, and citizenship.

When John Adams created the Constitution of Massachusetts, he said that he meant that every boy and girl should have the way opened for a liberal education.

Practically he succeeded. As a matter of fact, not in Massachusetts only, but in two-thirds of the United States, the way to a liberal education is open to every boy and girl born into them.

WHAT IS A LIBERAL EDUCATION?

eral education who cannot read or write or speak either language. Nor is it a state of information about things. Because a man knows that so many millimetres make a mile, or that four quarts make a gallon-or because he knows ten thousand such facts as these, he cannot claim that he has had a liberal education. The common language of the country is at fault here. For instruction is not education. Facts, like these, about the quart or the millimetre, are very convenient. But I can buy for $10 an encyclopedia which knows more of such facts than any one man who ever lived. No! A liberal education is an education which enables a man to speak the language of his time, and to understand it when it is spoken. And a liberal education is an education which tells a man how he can learn what he wants to know.

"If any man is diligent in his business," he may expect to stand before kings. Or he may stand before presidents, or speakers of the house, or senators, or governors, or masters of industry-before fine ladies, or distinguished men of letters. If he has had a liberal education he will be able to tell the king, or the governor, or the fine lady things they will like to know --and he will be able to learn from them things which they like to tell him. He will profit by the interviews as much as they --and they as much as he. For he will understand sufficiently well the language of his time. And he will know how and where to confess ignorance—and how and where he is to go to work to learn what he needs to know.

George Washington at Cambridge, in 1775, sent for Rufus Putnam, a colonel of Massachusetts recruits. He said he wanted him to accompany a party of six hundred men, whom General Ward would detail on the evening of the fourth of March; and, under cover of the night, with chandeliers and fascines, to make such defenses of Dorchester heights that they could not be taken by any force General Howe, the English commander, could bring against him.

Colonel Putnam said "Yes, sir," and mounted his horse and rode back to his quarters.

But he did not know what a chandelier was. He had never heard of a chandelier.