The Fargo Forum And Daily Republican

Books That Boys Like.

Harper's Weekly: Never without its interest is the question of what books different individuals would choose as favorites. Recently we have examined the choice recorded for reading in a boys' school. The ten most popular among the masters were: The Bible. Shakespeare, Tennyson's poems, "Les Miserables." Plutarch's Lives, life of Napoleon, Emerson's essays, Kipling's poems, "Middlemarch" and Gibbon's Rome.

The Sixth form liked: The Bible. "The Count of Monte Cristo," "The Three Musketeers." "Lorna Doone." "A Tale of Two Cities." "Ivanhoe," "Treasure Island," World's Almanac. "The Arabian Nights'" and "History of the World."

The choice of the youngsters in the Second form: The Bible. "Treasure Island." "The Last of the Mohicans." "Ivanhoe" "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn,' "Kidnapped," "Robinson Crusoe," "Oliver Twist" and David Copperfield."

The influence of prescribed reading is, of course, tremendous, and there can be traced also some of the influence of general tradition, but there remains some light on the taste of persons so situated. The list of one of the individual masters includes: The Bible, Shakespeare, Tennyson's poems, Chaucer, "Middlemarch." "Great Expectations," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Emerson's essays, life of Napoleon and "Treasure Island."

We do not really think much of any of these lists, but, then, the boys and their masters very likely would think little of ours. It would prefer Wordsworth to Tennyson or Kipling, Don Quixote or Wilhelm Meister to the novels mentioned, and if the island were very barren, we should not improbably include "Alice in Wonderland."