For two Greek boys, I made this little book, which tells them in English some of the stories that they will soon read for themselves in the tongue of their forefathers.
But the stories are not only for boys whose fatherland lies near the sunny sea through which ships, red-prowed and black, fared in the long-ago days.
Of such great deeds, by such brave men, do they tell, that they must make the hearts of all English boys, and of boys of every nation under the sun, grow big within them.
And when, in the gallant-sounding music of the Greek tongue in which the tales first were told, these boys read the story of the Siege of Troy, they must surely long to fight as fought the Greeks in days of old, and long to be heroes such as those who fought and who died without fear for the land that they loved.