The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-16

Maria went home with a pain in her
 head"
 < Dear young people. y3u know 1t all beforehand, why go over 1t agalnT
 But 1t won't seem like C Thanks giving number if we don't have Thanksgiving story, and Thanksgiv- ing dinner" Very true, mes enfants' and we are quite willing tc give you the story, but this year let us leave out the dinner Or If we must men tion the dinner. let us omit the bill of fare.
 Thanksgiving does not mean eating today only; 1t means saying, rhank you, good Lord, for all the dinners we've eaten before today, and not dtn- ners alone, but for the immortal minds aud souls you have given us as we'll
 A comfortable body Is great bless Ing, of course, but a keen mind and a pure soul are higher blessings. Ana if you eat a very large dinner your bodv will feel foolishly comfortable but your mind will be very sleepy and if you are not careful your soul may be a little fFetful. Dear, young people above all things never let your souls be fretful.
 However. Thanksgiving comes but once a year, and we will not preach any more We hate preachers. Eat turkey and cranberry. if you must and be thankful, but do net insist that wa
 shall talk about food,
 Books.
 This Is not the first time we have talked to yCu about boks, and we hope it may not be the last Today new ever, we wish to ask you not to Dc afraid of the grown up" books" Don't put off reading all the great old books So many new ones are being written in these days that unless you l begin te read when you are very young you will miss a great deal and miss 1t l sadly We knew a boy once who read twenty-nine of Mir. Henty's books. or perhaps it may have been one hundred | and twenty-nine. And he was very proud of himself. But we could not | helr feeling as if two of MT. Henty's books would have been enough; and we | wished that the other twenty-seven-- or one hundred and twentq -seven-had been by Scott or Dickens. Not that there is any harm in MT Henty, but
 Scott and Dickens are so much greater, l SC much more interesting. too--tf that
 boy had only known l.. Now, don't make a wFy face and tell
 us that Scott and Dickens are grown up' books. We shall not lis,en to that excuse; and, moreover, even though q l book may be written for grown people, | that is nc reason why even very young 1 people should not understand II ana care for it. Our mother began Scott | novels when Sn6 was SGN0h SSehA Q NAN and finished them when she was ten; and nobody made her read them or hribed her either. She loved them. l We began to read Dickens when we were eleven, and we began with Pick wick Papers" Perhaps your mother
 will shake her head and say we were l too little to understand 1t. but if we didn't understand it, we at least got an immense amount of enjoyment out of it. and laughed till we cried. We know a little girl who used to read l "Paradise Lost" aloud to her mother on Sunday afternoons. when she was
 eight years old. Now, perhaps, you | will tell me she did not understand
 that great poem. She is living in At
 lanta yet and helping to edit a great
 afternoon paper. Suppose you try and
 see If you can understand 1t before you
 attempt to judge that little girls mind.
 Then there Is Shakespeare that you
 might read if you only would-not
 Lambs Tales although they will do excellently well tc help you to under stand the stories. But we should like to read the plays themselves. Try Julius Caesar" with its splendid speeches. Try Macbeth" with it's three grim witches-more real than any every day ghost story Try Mid summer Nights Dream there are some of the most entertaining fairies ever found outside of fairyland itself Try The Merchant of Venice and choose your casket with Bassanio'
 Dear young people you must mol