PREFATORY NOTE

In these latter days when all places on the earth have grown of interest and a feeling of world kinship is to be desired, it is well that not only the student and the general reader, but young persons as well, should feel the thought of nations through their literatures. What more efficacious than a record of life through the medium of drama? Morsels in the form of the short play may lead to further acquaintance with not only these dramatists, but with others of equal or greater rank.

For a visit with strong personalities, here is offered the acquaintance of the agrarian hero, the Scandinavian pioneer of Iceland in "The Hraun Farm," the homely sweet Welsh soul in "The Merry Merry Cuckoo," and the Amazonian determination of the woman of the Sagas in "The Locked Chest."

To move in a mystical atmosphere, the reader may live with the very heart of India in the spiritually beautiful "Post Office."

For humor, there is enjoyment of the fanciful in "Six Who Pass," and the sharing of a laugh both last and best in a return to the past with an innovation in England's literature in "The Silver Lining." A surreptitious peep into domestic foibles in "By Ourselves" is allowed by a modern German who is not a materialist; an open invitation is extended by an

American to view the negro mind laid bare in “The Rider of Dreams," and the spirit of Irish humor and naïveté is realistic, indeed, in "Spreading the News."

Lastly, pathos has its mission for us in the sad solo of the Russian in "The Swan Song," and poverty and injustice claim attention from the Anglo-Saxon to the victim in his native home as seen in "The Man on the Kerb," and to the victim of adoption in "The Shadowed Star."

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA.

A. M. S.