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Compiled by
TO
My Mother and father
The compiler desires to make her grateful acknowledgmentsto the publishers and authors who have sogenerously given their permission to use selectionsfrom their copyrighted publications. She is especiallyindebted to Dodd, Mead & Co., Houghton, Mifflin& Co., The Century Co., The Outlook Co., Small,Maynard & Co., McClure, Phillips & Co., for extractsfrom "The Simple Life" by Charles Wagner andfrom "The Angelus" by Edwin Markham; G. P.Putnam's Sons for selections from "Christus Victor"by Henry Nehemiah Dodge; to Doubleday, Page &Co. for extracts from "The Story of My Life" byHelen Keller, copyright 1902, 1903; also for selectionsfrom "Afterwhiles," copyright 1887, "RileyFarm Rhymes," copyright 1885, "Riley Songs o'Cheer," copyright 1883, "Pipes o' Pan," copyright1888, used by special permission of the publishers,The Bobbs-Merrill Co., to Charles Scribner's Sonsfor selections from "Fisherman's Luck," "The LostWord," "Little Rivers," "The Story of the Psalms,""The Toiling of Felix and Other Poems," by HenryVan Dyke, and a selection from "El Dorado" byRobert Louis Stevenson.
Once family devotions were general, now theyare rare. There are reasons for the change. Onereason is that the simplicity of the old family lifeis gone. It is not easy to get all the members of thefamily together at any one time in the day. A partof this is due to less leisure now than formerly.Men must catch trains in the morning. In theevening they are distracted by manifold social engagements.
Yet the need of spiritual adjustment is ever thesame. Rapid transit, the telephone, the telegraph,do not take the place of God. Indeed the morerapid pace involved in these modern pace-makers,renders the more necessary some pause in the dayfor prayer, some upward look, when for a momentthe soul may find an open way between itself andGod. But how and when? Why not the breakfasttable? Surely one or two minutes may be spared.Thirty seconds of silence, then the reading of anoble sentiment from some one who has been thinkingfor us,—another pause,—and a few words ofprayer, framed by some one with more leisure thanwe have, but who puts us in the mood of prayerand so starts us right upon the duties of the day,—thiswill bring the needed readjustment.
Such is the plan and purpose of this little book.It is made for bus