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.