John Alden's Letter

"Historians record the past, but poets vitalize it. Great deeds of men and nations are chronicled in official state papers, but they live in song and story. Enshrine history in literature, and you give it both currency and permanency, for literature not only recalls the past, but makes of it an ever-living present.

"In great books great men talk to us and pour their souls into ours...We never get broad culture from a narrow circle."

--John Snider

Art credit: John Alden's Letter by C.Y. Turner