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FOREWORD

Here are fifty stories of action and adventure, some of them original but the greater portion gathered from the literature of various periods and of many countries. No attempt has been made to include every famous ride or rider, for that would have been impossible. The reader will doubtless recognize some "old favorites," without which the collection would have been incomplete, but the majority of the stories, whether in prose or verse, are new to schoolbook literature and have never before been brought together into a single collection. That they may not only amuse and instruct but be instrumental in cultivating a taste for the best forms of literary expression, is the earnest hope of the compiler.