From the compiler's introduction: "The ages suggested for the Scholars of this little School were ten to fourteen. These are long, long years of youth, equal to ten of the older, twenty of the aged: not only in effectiveness, but also in the sensation of time. Therefore it was not easy to choose the all-appropriate from our great and various literature. Something there might always be for fourteen to tolerate and yet for ten to hope to achieve. I have taken some poems for their happy, courageous, and honourable thought, some for the very poetry of poetry. The size of the book was, of course, limited; there would have been matter, from the stores of past and present, for fifty such books." Sepia frontis. photogravure of Alice Meynell from a studio portrait taken by Sherril Schell shortly before her death in November, 1922. This was her last literary work.