Teachers found that what they considered to be "the simple" was not the simple to children; what they took to be "the known" was the unfamiliar to children.

[Illustration] CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Now, in the event that this book may have fallen into the hands of someone who is unfamiliar with the marvelous Land of Oz, it seems fitting that an explanation be inserted right about here.

The brutes of the swamp and the field, who gathered round them and listened, found nothing new or unfamiliar in the message of the poets.

But we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and the time and place disposed us to the reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever.

Behind them formed the procession of little boys, little girls, country Jakes, policemen, fat ladies, thin men, sword swallowers, wild men of Borneo, armless wonders and charioteers, some of them well in their cups, all of them excited and happy and dazzled by the flow of light and colour round them and by the familiar faces strangely unfamiliar under bizarre wigs and barbaric paint.

It is unfamiliar for the reason that it is seamy and uninviting.

It was a wondrous journey to Barney, The pages of Sindbad alone seemed to have a parallel for the awful mysteries of that long, long flight through jungles of towering timber, whose leaves and bark were as unfamiliar as Brazilian growth to the troops of Pizarro or the Congo vegetation to the French pioneer.

A shudder unfamiliar until then ran the entire length of his back, making him close his eyes.

The latter is the issue raised by the German Chancellor's pleanot so unfamiliar on the lips of our own countrymen as we are now tempted to believethat "Necessity knows no law."