THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON. CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO PE V.6 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1917. PREFACE THIS series of Readers has been prepared in the belief that the instruction in reading in the schools should be based on a selection of the classic of our literature. The pupil is introduced not only to what is excellent in itself but to what his father and mother have read before him, to what has become a valued part of the heritage of the nation and the race. All other school reading should be supplementary to this study of what is best in literature. A classic is not necessarily something old; rather it is something so good that it never grows old. The selections in this series are EVERYDAY CLASSICS because they are stories and poems that have really become a part of our everyday thinking and feeling. The teacher will not find novelties here; but this literature that has endeared itself to so many will all be new to the child. Its vistas of history, its records of bravery and sacrifice, its sentiment and its sunshine, will be for him as new as they are wonderful and important. The SIXTH READER is a book of world-famous stories. The great poems of Greece and Rome, the Bible, the myths of Northern Europe, and the epics and romances of the Age of Chivalry are all represented. Among more modern authors are Dickens, Tennyson, Byron, Shelley, Kipling, Bryant, |