The point of view from which this book is written is of one who believes that the child about to undertake the formal study of American history in the seventh and eighth grades of our schools, needs first a preliminary sketch of the history of earlier times—especially of the Middle Ages. In attempting to make intelligible to children the institutions and events of the Middle Ages, the author is aware of the magnitude of the task which he has essayed. He is, however, firmly of the opinion that the difficulty arises frequently not so much from an inability on the part of the child to grasp the essential ideas underlying medieval relations, as from the lack of a clear understanding of these on the part of the narrator himself, and the need of finding familiar non-technical terms of definition.
