BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 19

in writing books for young and old; but his chief joy has
been in service for the young.

This story of Dr. Sutton’s conundrum will serve as a
word of greeting to the boys of America. It may be presumed
that many of the boys who read this book will range from
twelve to sixteen years of age. You are the materials out
of which the future men of America must be made. What
you are now and in the years to come, America will be.
Nine years more and the nineteenth century will have run its
course. With all its treasures and trophies, with all its gifts
and legacies, it will have become part of that shoreless sea—
the eternity of the past. The great bell of time will boom
out the year 1900! The twentieth century will have dawned!
And you, the boys of America to-day, are to be the men of
the twentieth century. Its fortunes and its fate will be largely
in your hands.

You have received a glorious heritage! The world has
made wondrous strides since those five boys met under Wilson’s
maple in the July morning long ago; indeed, it hardly seems
like the same world. ‘The privileges that are as common to
you as violets in the spring were not born then. You have
comforts and luxuries that kings could not command a century
ago. You have educational advantages, without money and
without price, that the princes and nobles of the old world
never dreamed of. The poorest boy in America can have an
education free to-day that will fit him for any walk in life.
The poorest boy in America can buy a library of books to-day
for five or ten dollars that could not be bought a hundred
years ago for a million dollars!

Boys of America! It is a grand thing to live in this
free land in the old age of the nineteenth century. We
have received a glorious legacy! Poets have sung for us,