Some Interesting Letters:

I. Thomas B. Macaulay to his Father

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT and thanks are due to Charles Scribner's Sons for their courtesy in permitting the use in this volume of the two patriotic stanzas from the poems of Henry van Dyke and the selection from the Story of Siegfried, by James Baldwin, of which they are the publishers.

The story entitled "The Captive" is an extract from Selma Lagerlöf's Wonderful Adventures of Nils, and is used by special arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company, the publishers of that book.

The selection from The Horse Fair, entitled "The Story of Bucephalus," is used by permission and courtesy of The Century Company, publishers.

The selections from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry W. Longfellow, Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, Lucretia P. Hale, John G. Saxe, Horace E. Scudder, and James Russell Lowell are used by permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers of the works of those authors.

Thanks are also proffered to Sophia M. Swett for the use of the poem entitled "The Blue Jay," by her sister, Susan H. Swett; to Orison S. Marden for "A Lesson from Dr. Franklin"; to Frank G. Carpenter for "A Railway Journey in England"; and to the various other living writers, whether known or unknown, from whose works selections have been chosen for this Fifth Reader.

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FIFTH READER

THE GREAT WAVE1

In one of the islands of Japan there was once a pleasant little village close by the sea. There was but one street in the village, and the houses on one side of it were built so near to the shore that the waves at high tide came to within a few feet of the doors.

Behind the houses and the street there was a steep hill, or bluff, and stretching from the top of this there was a broad, level plain. On this plain the people of the village had their rice fields, upon which they depended for the greater part of their food.

One evening in autumn there was a feast in the village. It was a time of thanksgiving; for the harvest had been very good. The rice crop was larger than ever before, but it was not yet threshed from the straw. It was piled up in huge stacks in the fields, and on the morrow the threshing was to begin.

Although it was yet early twilight, the long street was lighted with gayly colored lanterns. All the A story of Japan retold.

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villagers were out of doors. The children were romping and playing. The older people were walking or talking or sitting in groups by the seashore.

Only one person was absent from the merrymaking, and that was an old man who, with his lantern in his hand, had gone to the top of the bluff to look at his stacks of rice. He was about to return to the village when suddenly there was a shaking of the ground beneath him. He knew that it was an earthquake; he had felt many earthquakes in his lifetime.

He stood still and looked down upon the happy village and the merry street. The children were running and playing as before. The young men and young women were dancing. The older people were still talking and walking. They had all felt earthquakes before and were not alarmed.

The old man saw all this, and he thought it was a pleasant sight, indeed. Then he looked at the sea, and a great fear came upon him. The waves were unlike any he had ever seen before. The water appeared to be running away from the land.

The men and women on the beach also noticed the strange movements of the sea. They were not alarmed, for they thought that these were caused only by the tide.

But the old man on the hill could see farther than

that his voice could not be heard in the village. But he ran quickly to his stacks of rice; he lifted the burning candle from his lantern, and touched the flame to the dry straw. In a moment there was a tremendous blaze, lighting up the village and the hill and the plain beyond.

The people below saw it, and were astonished. Then with one accord every man, woman, and