UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS BY JOHN HARRINGTON COX, A.M. Professor of English Philology in West Virginia University . 8S& 3 ' BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND 1908 COMPANY Copyright, 1908, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rig/Us reserved. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, II. S. A. r - *+ - To My Wife ANNIE BUSH COX i 575 C-S3 PREFACE This book is the result of five years' ex- perience with teachers in the Summer School of the West Virginia University and in teachers' institutes in several States. It is the outgrowth of practical work in trying to meet needs as they exist. It aims to present the subject in a clear, simple, and logical way, and seeks to be helpful to those teachers especially who have not at hand extended library facilities. I am under special obligation to Professor Walter Cochran Bronson, a former teacher of mine. Many of the ideas in the chapters on " Form " and " The Story in the Upper Grades " were originally his, and no doubt in some cases the exact expressions. I am also indebted to President D. B. Purinton, State Superintendent Thomas C. Miller, Dr. Waitman Barbe, Professor Robert A. Arm- strong, and Professor J. N. Deahl for their Vlll PREFACE courtesy in examining the manuscript, and to Professor James M. Callahan for reading the proof. I take this occasion also to ex- press my thanks to the numerous publishers who have so generously supplied me with books for examination. Their names appear in the lists at the end of this volume. CONTENTS Page Reading 1 Literature and Life ........ 4 Why Study Literature 7 Criticism 11 The Distinguishing Marks 13 The Emotional Element 19 Imagination 38 Thought . 44 Form . 47 Application of Tests 62 Tributaries of the Literary Stream ... 75 Presentation in the Primary Grades , . 89 The Story in the Upper Grades .... 96 A Model Lesson 112 Course of Study 128 Extended List for Substitution, Leisure Hours, and Home Reading 176 Bibliography 197 For Teachers 213 List of Publishers 214 Index of Titles and Authors 217 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS READING ;85b3 . . TT is generally conceded that reading is the most important of all the subjects taught in the schools. It is fundamental ; it is the open sesame to those treasures of the race stored away in books. It is also the most persistent of all the acquirements of school. From the earliest years of childhood to the last moments of recorded time, people read. And yet my observation is that our public schools are more concerned with learning the mechanics of reading than with the deeper importance of learning what to read. *' To the great hosts of grammar-school graduates the realm of literature is practi- cally an undiscovered country. The public schools exist for the purpose of preparing boys and girls for complete liv- ing, not for a partial, one-sided life. More- 1 2 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS over, this fullness of life is to be N experienced during the school years as well as when the days of school are over. An active, directed, progressive participation in life is the heri- tage of every school child. The healthful, vigorous interaction of all the faculties, tuned to perfect harmony, should make the song of life. Fullness of life comprehends, not merely the material and mental spheres, but those even more significant worlds of the imagination and the emotions. From these the will, the master wheel of the ma- chinery of conduct, derives its impetus. The hunger to know the meaning of life is almost as primal as the hunger for food. It is the function of the seejp of the world to satisfy this hunger. The wisdom which the race has acquired is for the most part locked up in those books which we call literature. In them the meaning «of life has found a permanent expression. Out of the Bible, Shakespeare, and the rest, come the issues of life. Reading, properly taught, ought to do at least three things for the child. First, it READING 3 ought to create a taste for Hferaturg, and by taste I mean an appreciation of that which is choice and best. Secondly, it ought to fit the child to read intelligently and with delight the great books of the world. And thirdly, it ought to create a permanent interest, — an interest which causes the child to read continually the best litera- ture throughout life. Application, however diligent, to the school readers alone, will never bring about such results. Much of the material of these readers is intrinsically worthless. Great quantities of it are scrappy, and in the hands of the average teacher pro- duce no lasting results, while that which is unitary and re^l literature is necessarily confined to the smaller classics. Great books, and those approximately great, ought to be well known and thor- oughly loved. To read these with pleasure and with understanding, a specific prepa- ration is required. A fairly comprehensive knowledge of the great tributaries of the literary stream is necessary to an enjoyable and profitable reading of the books worth 4 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS while. Such a knowledge necessitates a carefully-graded and selected series of books, supplementary to the readers used in school. LITERATURE AND LIFE Literature has been characterized by Barrett Wendell as the "lasting expression in words of the meaning of life." The statement is profoundly true. Within its pages is to be found the deepest and truest revelation that the race has made of itself. Here the seers of the world have recorded their flashes of insight. The answers of the universe to man's fervid, persistent ques- tionings are written here. The agony of the human soul in its endeavor to fathom the mysteries of existence is engraven on its pages. The intellect has ransacked every sphere, from the lowest to the empyrean, to enrich its store. Its chief function is to lay bare the wisdom of the heart, purified of its LITERATURE AND LIFE 5 dross by the masterful creative imagina- tions of men. It is the nature of the human soul to strive after the meaning of life. Its desire is to be permeated by "sweetness and light." On every side we are hemmed in by the limitations of our nature and environment. The desire to enter the widening boundaries of life forces itself upon us at every moment. It is the most constant and the most perma- nent of human longings. Its imperative demands transcend all others. To under- stand the significance of existence and the mystery of self is to possess supreme knowledge. Literature is the key to self-revelation. It unlocks the mystery of our being. " Books reveal us to ourselves." They show us the possibilities of our nature. They make in- telligible the shifting, endless panorama of experiences. They satisfy the burning de- sire to learn what emotions are within our range. Life is a succession of emotions and out of these are its issues. While reason furnishes the guide they furnish the motive 6 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS power. In these are to be found the im- pulses for whatever man has done or dreamed, suffered or enjoyed, and their adequate expression is what we call literature. The hunger to know to the full the emo- tions of the race seems almost as funda- mental as the hunger for love. In the realm of books we may wander through the whole range of mortal joys and sorrows. Through them our lives may be enriched with a full- ness beside which our ordinary existence is stale and unprofitable. To read under- standing^ and delightedly a great book is to have a profound emotional experience. The result of every such experience is to add new life to that already acquired and to enter more fully into that race inheritance which is not less real and far more signifi- cant than the heritage of material things. Bewildered by the complex motives of real life and its shifting events, we are slow to grasp its meaning. Its mysteries are con- fusing; and chaotic. Our contact is with its fragments and not its entirety. Its essen- WHY STUDY LITERATURE 7 tials are seldom seen. It is by a chance gesture, or word, or look, that often our most intimate friend reveals his real self. Our individual experiences are so confused and changed by the crowd of those which throng upon us that we fail to understand them. The rare souls only can unweave the tangled skein of fate. To the seers, the poets, and the great prose authors, it is given to arrange and present life's truths. Their writings are life incarnate. By pro- jecting their imaginatron into the unknown vast that envelops man they make life what it is, — the life of which man realizes him- self capable and enthrones in his hopes and dreams. Yea more, the life which he actualizes in no small degree. WHY STUDY LITERATURE There are many reasons why children should be required to study literature. By study, I do not mean the mere reading of 8 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS books. There must be that keen intellectual process, that attitude of mind, and that per- sistency of purpose which enable the stu- dent to apprehend the creative thought of the book. The process must be one of the keenest enjoyment, for no literary study is of high value to children which is not a delight for them. The primary object is pleasure, the ultimate oJriecFis assimilation. Thus to approach tlTeBcat worlds of art is both a joy and a dute. A mind so trained is not only quickened by being touched by the great intellects and imaginations, but is made elastic and is enriched by social cul- ture and life insight. The study of literature implies also se- lected material. Children should not be allowed to read at pleasure all the books that may be within their reach. It goes without saying that the best only should be used, and that which fits into a definite, logical, and approved scheme. Such litera- ture brings children face to face with the thoughts of the masters; it appeals to the intellect and the reason ; it awakens and stirs WHY STUDY LITERATURE 9 the emotions; it exercises the imagination and the fancy ; it trains the aesthetic faculty by developing a sense of beauty in form and diction; it cultivates the moral and reli- gious sentiment through ideal representa- tions ; it creates a taste for what is clean and healthy and enlarges the appreciation of what is choice and best. It has been said that the true poet builds upon eternal foundations and makes im- mortal all that is best in the world. The true prose writer does the same. Any litera- ture worthy of the name fosters the love of truth because this is its chief element. Un- derlying every masterpiece is permanent truth. Then, too, literature brings out human conduct and character in a great variety of ways which conform to human life. In them men and women march before us. We hear them speak and see them act, and thereby judge their motives and condemn or approve their deeds. They furnish us a representation of life, and as we watch them we are moved to pity, anger, or sympathy. 10 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS All this, if directed and controlled, is most beneficial to the child. In the development of characters as we see them grow and be- come different in response to definite influ- ences, the principles which underlie human conduct are revealed and we realize in ad- vance what the results will be if certain motives are allowed free play. And finally, the best literature inspires people with a sense of the richness and grandeur of life. It leads to optimism, and furthermore it furnishes an antidote to vul- garity, which Jordan defines as "content- ment with inferior things." Says Ruskin, "Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind." In a word, the study of literature leads to culture, which in the high- est sense is a synonym for character. This is the only thing in the world of absolute value in itself. CRITICISM 11 CRITICISM Matthew Arnold once said that the function of criticism is "to know the best that is thought and known in the world." ,To know the best when one sees it requires an intelligent appreciation. Any piece of literature worthy the name is a work of art. To criticize a work of art requires taste, that is, the power of perceiving and estimating excellence. Literature is one of the fine arts, and an appreciation of what is finest and best is a necessary equipment for one who teaches it well. Appreciation for every one is partly na- tive and partly acquired. To a certain de- gree each person is an epitome of his pro- genitors. He inherits not only his physical qualities but a sense of that which is beau- tiful, congruous, and symmetrical. The fine taste of such a man as Ralph Waldo Emerson is due in no small degree to his long line of cultured ancestors. Not every one is endowed with perceptions as fine and 12 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS keen as Emerson's, and no doubt in the ulti- mate analysis of critical acumen these in- herited perceptions play a considerable part. But no matter how highly nature has endowed one, there must be training and cultivation. The keenest appreciation of literature comes from a special education. No matter how cultured the germ, it must be fostered and disciplined. Acquired taste, however, is for us all, and for most of us it is practically all we have. We get it much as people do good manners. I doubt if anyone ever acquired good man- ners by reading books of etiquette only. To be well mannered one must associate with people who have good manners and study them at first hand. And so with an appre- ciation for the choicest literature. It can- not be obtained by reading books about literature. Association with that which is recognized as choice and best is necessary. Its special forms and elements must be studied. Each one must begin as a fol- lower, strive to be interested in what seems worth while, master its methods and laws, THE DISTINGUISHING MARKS 13 in order that in the end he may become a leader. A teacher must be a leader. A leader in the field of literature implies not only taste, but the ability to give each piece of art its due estimate. A sense of relative values is imperative. A wide knowledge and a power of correlation is essential. The end must be foreseen from the beginning in order to develop a course methodical, com- prehensive, and articulated. Every teacher in the primary and grammar grades should know all the work, be able to look forward and backward, know the foundation and the finished structure. No teacher is fitted to teach literature who knows only the litera- ture of a particular grade. THE DISTINGUISHING MARKS Every teacher of literature must ask him- self these questions : What is it ? How may I know it ? What are its functions ? 14 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Like every general concept it is hard to define. Every one knows, or thinks he knows, what it is until asked to give a defi- nition. In its widest sense it is "The col- lective body of literary productions embrac- ing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing." So understood, lit- erature includes not only such books as Shakespeare's plays and Scott's novels, but Euclid's geometry and Ray's arithmetic. Such a conception is too inclusive. Neither the ordinary person nor the scholar so under- stands it. To the untrained mind the dis- tinguishing marks of literature are usually very vague. They are generally summed up in the words, "poetry," "novel," "drama," and " essay." An exact, concise definition is perhaps impossible, and such as have been offered are more or less unsatisfactory. Here are a few : Ralph Waldo Emerson. — "Literature is a record of the best thoughts !" George E. Woodberry. — "Literature is the organ of the race mind." Stopford Brooke. — "By literature we THE DISTINGUISHING MARKS 15 mean the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women, arranged in a way that shall give pleasure to the reader." J. Rose Colby. — "Literature is an artis- tic embodiment of life, the work of the selec- tive judgment and creative imagination." C. T. Winchester. — "Literature is al- ways, in the last analysis, an imaginary representation of life, as the author sees life." John Morley. — "Literature consists of all the books, and they are not so many, where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form." Arlo Bates. — "Literature may be broadly defined as the adequate expression of genuine and typical emotion." These statements are excellent as far as they go. The difficulty is appreciated when one studies the attempt of Sainte-Beuve to define a classic author, — "an author that has enriched the human mind, who has really added to its treasure, who has got it to take a step farther, who has discovered some 16 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS unequivocal moral truth, or penetrated to some eternal passion in that heart of man where it seemed as though all were known and explored ; who has produced his thought or his observation or his invention under some form, no matter what, so it may be large, acute, and reasonable, sane and beau- tiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style of everybody, — in a style that is at once new and antique, and is the contem- porary of the ages." ' Admirable as this statement is, it is by no means easy to com- prehend, and the average teacher finds it practically impossible to apply it in literary tests. Then, too, all literature is not of this exalted standard. A more helpful statement than any of the above is one made by De Quincey in the third of his "Letters to a Young Man." He says : "All that is literature seeks to com- municate power; all that is not literature to communicate knowledge. Now, if it be asked what is meant by communicating 1 Quoted from Winchester's " Principles of Literary Criticism," p. 36. THE DISTINGUISHING MARKS 17 power, I, in my turn, would ask by what name a man would designate the case in which I should be made to feel vividly, and with a vital consciousness, emotions which ordinary life rarely or never supplies occa- sion for existing." Elsewhere he says: "There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach ; the function of the second is to move ; the first is a rudder ; the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy." The literature of knowledge makes its appeal to the intellect. Its function is pri- marily to give information, merely for the sake of the information. Its province is the realm of fact. The mathematician or scien- tist is concerned in presenting his thought in a clear, logical, and convincing way, and cares nothing about the feelings of the reader. His business is to make us see things as they are. 2 18 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The literature of power corresponds to what we commonly call literature. Power, as De Quincey uses the word, means power over our feelings, and literature makes its fundamental appeal to the emotions. It makes this appeal chiefly through the im- agination. Literature is not limited by the realm of facts but may, and usually does, deal with the larger term, truth. In addition to making us see things as they are, it asks us to see things as they might be. Thought is everywhere fundamental. The literature of knowledge and the didactic and persuasive forms of the literature of power find their reason for existence here. It fur- nishes the purpose for which they were written. But in many pieces of genuine literature the thought is comparatively slight. I trust it has appeared so far from this brief discussion that the distinguishing marks of literature are emotion, imagination, and thought. There remains one other element to be mentioned, namely, form. This is of exceedingly great importance, although not THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 19 an end in itself. It is the means by which all thought, feeling, and imagination find expression. THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT A fundamental law of art is that it makes an appeal to the emotion. Music, the most typical of all the fine arts, makes this appeal directly. It apparently needs no intellectual process to bring about its re- sults. There is no active play of the imag- ination, no formation of concrete, definite concepts. At best the intellectuality of the process is but a vague, dreamy suggestion. Its subtlety escapes analysis. The various tones are conveyed immediately to certain nerve centers and we feel. Emotion follows emotion and may have no connection with any intellectual processes whatsoever. Literature is also a fine art, but it is not so typical as music. Its appeal is an indirect one. It works with definite, intellectual 20 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS entities. These representations are con- crete, whether objects or actions, and are made vivid and effective by the imagination. Indeed, it is questionable whether without imagination literature can produce emotion. Ruskin has said "Poetry is the sugges- tion by the imagination of noble grounds for noble emotions." This is true of all worthy literature. The most significant fact about it is its power to excite emotion. This fact is fundamental. Take away this power and the composition ceases to be literature. With it the production is vital. It never grows old. One may read it again and again. The emotion experienced at first may be excited an indefinite number of times and always with the same or a greater sense of pleasure. It is this emotional pleas- ure which causes us to say over and over the bits of poetry we have learned, and the choice prose. It is this effect which makes us go regularly to those writings that awake the masterful and primal emotions of the soul, — such passions as joy, love, aspira- tion, pity, terror, and pathos. In such as THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 21 these, the soul touches the high tide of life, floats out into that eternal vast, and dis- covers its affinity to other souls and to God. How cold is the mere statement of fact, and how soon may it be forgotten ! In the religious experience of most people there comes a period of doubt — questionings as to the historic Christ, the story of salvation, and the certainty of a future life. When the battle is over we calmly say, "I believe that when the time comes to die God will call me. At that time I trust there shall be no doubt. Do not weep for me, — I shall see Jesus face to face." Such a statement does not move people. They do not learn it by heart and repeat it on countless occasions. But once a great poet had those thoughts. He lived on a beautiful island. Far away to the south and west stretched the open sea. Over the great sandbar at times he could hear the rush and murmur of the tide as it came in, lashed by the storm. He had seen the tide at its full, when all was calm, silently go out into the great ocean as the tolling bell marked the fall of twilight and 22 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS night with its sable blanket shut out the glories of the world. He had lived through a storm of doubt that had been stilled. His faith was at the last unmoved. The mys- tery of it had merged into verity, and in beautifully figurative language he expressed it all in an exquisite poem, — a bit of lit- erature touching the deepest emotion of the soul, the passion for eternal life and peace. "Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me ! And may there be no moaning of the bar, "When I put out to sea, "But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. "Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark ! And may there be no sadness of farewell, "When I embark. "For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar." ' 1 Copyright, 1893, by Macmillan and Co. THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 23 • Not everything that has the power to arouse emotion is worthy of study. Man has ignoble as well as noble emotions, and only the latter are to be fostered and cared for. Noble literature does not exclude the contemplation of ignoble emotions in others, but it does exclude that which awakens ignoble passions in ourselves. Among these are envy, disgust, jealousy, covetousness, and such selfish and unhealthful desires as degrade and contract the soul. The sensa- tional story and the penny dreadful that rack the nerves and disturb the senses, the so-called realism that grovels in the filth of life, lays bare its living sores, induces disgust and contempt for humanity, should be con- signed to the bottomless pit. They are "not sincere, not convincing, not consistent, not true to life." The first test of the emo- tional element is that of healthfulness. If this test fails, it is not worth while to apply others. The book or poem, or whatever it may be, is not for boys and girls. The further value of emotion is tested by its vividness or power. Does this thing take 24 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS hold of you ? Does it make you see some- thing of "the light that never was on sea or land," — realize something of "the conse- cration and the poet's dream?" Is your soul thrilled and expanded ? The more intensely the book does these things the greater literature it is, all else being equal. Nor is it at all necessary that these emotions should be of the active, boisterous kind. They may very well be of this nature as in the famous speech of Henry V to his soldiers before Harfleur: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead ! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger : Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-fa vor'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'er whelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 25 Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noble English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war proof, Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument ! Dishonor not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war !" On the other hand there may be just as deep a power, just as fervid a welling of those subtle and deeply calm emotions which ordinary occasions never touch and which usually lie too deep for tears. The soul is hushed to silence in the presence of such a thing as Wordsworth's sonnet: "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea : Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly. Dear Child ! Dear Girl ! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 2G LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Thy nature is not therefore less divine : Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not." A third test of the emotional value of lit- erature is its variety. In a small bit of verse or prose there may be one emotion only, as in the little squib: "Jennie kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in. Time, you thief, who love to put Sweets into your list, put that in. Say I'm ugly, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jennie kissed me." Here is just the one emotion of delight. In something more pretentious, Burns' "John Anderson, my Jo," one finds two emotions. "Jo" means dear, and there is in the poem, on the part of the old wife, a keen sense of remembered joy of things past and an exquisite pathos at what is to come. THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 27 "John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent; Your locks were like the raven, Your bonnie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw; But blessing on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo. "John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go; And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo." And so it may be in all minor productions. But in a great piece of literature of any con- siderable length there must be a wide range of emotions. This must be so in order to be true to life. Our emotions are in a con- stant flux. A single one can be held in its intensity but a moment. Just as soon as joy, sorrow, pity, terror, or any other emo- tion reaches its acme, it begins to shade off into something else, or at once to give way 28 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS to its opposite, perhaps. The dramatist when he has wrought us up to the highest tragic passion, knowing that we can endure it but an instant, changes the scene, intro- duces a Launcelot Gobbo, or the grave- digger singing at his work. Let us con- sider for a moment one of Shakespeare's tragedies. We approach it with the serenity of a summer day. But in a moment we are transformed. The storm of passion breaks as from a clear sky. Our being throbs with hope and love, and the mighty surges of pity and terror sweep over us. How beauti- ful, how pathetic, how terrible is the story of Othello ! Venice, the Bride of the Sea, lies tranquilly sleeping on his bosom. The moonlight streams across the Adriatic, and lovingly touches its battlements and towers. The gilded dome of St. Mark's glitters like a beacon. Here and there in the dark shadows lurks a cloaked and muffled figure. At times the glint of an oar is seen and the low plashing of waves against the wharf is heard as some belated gondolier pushes by THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 29 in his strange craft. Suddenly we are startled by the cry — " What, ho, Brabantio ! Signior Brabantio, ho ! " Startled by "The timorous accent and dire yell, As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities." From this fond old father, with his tran- quil slumber, passes forever his peace of mind. The jewel of his life, the beautiful and lovely Desdemona, has forsaken him for the dusky Moor. In vain his puny efforts beat against the bulwarks of fate. He cannot believe that Desdemona would of her own free will fly to that "she feared to look on." He will hale Othello before the Ducal court; degradation and loss of life shall be the penalty of his use of witchcraft. At the tribunal of state our sympathy for the bereaved father is quickly swallowed up in the noble defence and the noble defender. Listen to his words: "Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, My very noble and approved good masters, 30 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter, It is most true; true, I have married her. The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in speech, And little blest with the soft phrase of peace : For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us'd Their dearest action in the tented field; And little of this great world can I speak More than pertains to feats of broil and battle, And therefore little shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself. "Her father loved me, oft invited me, Still questioned me the story of my life From year to year, — the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have pass'd. I ran it through even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it; Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence, And portance in my travel's history; Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak, — such was the process. THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 31 "This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house affairs would draw her thence; Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She'd come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse : which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively. I did consent, And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffered. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : She swore, in faith 't was strange, 't was passing strange, 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful ; She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me, And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake; She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I lov'd her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have us'd." How we love the beautiful Desdemona as she bravely takes her place by the side of her rightful lord, and what inexpressible 32 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS pity for the old father who, with haughty mien and flippant speech, totters away to die of a broken heart. But this feeling does not possess us long. "Never morning wore to evening; but some heart did break," and the tragedy of life is inextricably interwoven with the comedy. The scene shifts. It is the isle of Cyprus. The storm that had so lately moved upon the deep is still. The wind that "ruffianed so upon the sea" is gone to sleep. "The chidden billow," "the wind-shak'd surge" "that seemed to cast its water on the burning Bear" no longer "mounts up to the fixed star." The sun-kissed isle is but the image of the "aching joy" of Desdemona and the Moor. Listen to Othello : " O my soul's joy ! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken'd death ! And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell 's from heaven ! If it were now to die, 'T were now to be most happy ; for, I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute, That not another comfort like unto this Succeeds in unknown fate." THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 33 What a premonition ! and in our intensity of joy we feel a thrill of terror. A fiend is upon their track. Infinitely cunning, re- lentless, and compassionless, Iago out of suspicion will act as for certainty. The arch devil summons his demon of jealousy and bids him destroy the noble soul of Othello. How our heart pulses with hope when the serpent is rebuffed ! But inch by inch he coils round his victim "sick and wounded" until at last, crushed, that victim utters the heart-rending cry, "The pity of it, Iago ! O Iago, the pity of it." Unwavering now he moves toward the goal of destruction. He enters the chamber of the sleeping Desdemona. The light burns dimly. Have you ever seen him and not had that peculiar feeling which makes the hair stand on end ? Listen ! He is talking to himself : "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul, — Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars ! It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood, Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. 34 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Put out the light, and then — put out the light ! If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me ; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have pluck 'd the rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It must needs wither ; I '11 smell it on the tree. Ah, balmy breath, thou dost almost presuade Justice to break her sword ! One more, one more. Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after. One more, and this the last." And throughout it all our hope struggles with our fear. Where is the angel that has charge of her who sleeps ? A moment of fearful suspense ! The fierce, wild plunge of a beast ! A low moan ! The pitiable, upturned face of the dead ! The paroxysm of rage is past. Truth, alas too late, stalks upon the scene. The noble soul is again itself. For one brief moment it asserts its natural grandeur: "I pray you in your letters When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 35 Nor set down aught in malice ; then you must speak Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well ; Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought Perplex 'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe ; of one whose subdued eyes Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinable gum. Set you down this; And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban 'd Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him — thus." And as we pass, consigning them to "si- lence and pathetic dust," we understand as never before the beautiful words of Longfellow : "The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. Shadows of evening fall around us and the world seems a reflection — - itself a broader shadow. We look forward into the lonely coming night. The soul with- draws into itself. Then stars arise and the night is holy." In the sacred hush that follows we "take 36 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS up the burden of life again," better, nobler, truer, — the great passions of our souls being chastened and subdued. It is to be observed also that in the tragedy just quoted the great variety of effects are all brought into harmony with the lurid atmo- sphere of jealousy. Not for one moment is the emotion of the reader lost, — not for one moment is the keen interest blunted by moralizing. The master note once struck is sustained. This power of sustained emo- tion is one of the prime qualities of the great dramatists, novelists, and poets, and is one of the chief tests of a long and varied production. The final test in this field is the nature of the emotions themselves. Not all are equally high in rank, though they may in themselves be of admirable quality. The emotional pleasure which arises from the mere jingle of nonsense rhymes is a legitimate one. Literature has power to arouse a whole group of emotions dependent upon the senses. Keats, as no other poet perhaps, revels in sensuous beauty. Not infrequently THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 37 he stops with the sensuous charm. Litera- ture has the power to reproduce the most beautiful things in the natural world with the keenest sense of pleasure, and often the pleasure does not go beyond the contempla- tion of them. Such emotions are very dif- ferent from those of Wordsworth in "Lines Written above Tintern Abbey." These have a moral element, they touch the main- spring of conduct. Such emotions are of a deeper character than mere sensuous or aesthetic ones. An emotional experience of a great deed, a sublime presence, is worth more than sensuous delight, however ex- quisite. Mr. Winchester says: "We may lay it down as a rule, that those emotions which are intimately related to the conduct of life are of higher rank than those which are not; and that consequently, the emo- tions highest of all are those related to the deciding forces of life, the affections and the conscience." This is a profound truth, and the superlatively great books are those which aim to form and enlarge the soul through ethical motives. 38 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS IMAGINATION The faculty which we call imagination is of signal importance. This, more than any other mental faculty, separates man from the brute creation. Perception, memory, emotion, and, seemingly in some cases, reason, are shared by man and the lower animals. Imagination seems to belong to man apart, and among men themselves it is the mental faculty which most largely di- vides the higher and lower orders. A trained imagination is one of the distin- guishing marks of scholarship and culture. It plays its great part not only in literature, but, seizing upon the facts of science, leads the mind beyond them to a realization of a Newton's principles, a Kepler's laws, or a Darwin's theory of evolution. Without the aid of the imagination, these truths could never have been known. Nothing is more practical. The commonest things we have are in a way the product of the imagination. The great railroads, that band the nations IMAGINATION 39 together, existed first as a product of the imaginative faculty before they existed in wood and steel. The telegraph, telephone, and the ocean steamer were first construc- tive conceptions. The house exists in the mind of the architect before it does in wood and stone. Imagination, in some of its forms, not only provides the rapture of a "Hamlet" or "The Idyls of the King," but it makes possible the wonders of science and the comforts of civilization. The process of imagination is more easily described than defined. Its highest func- tion is to create new wholes. From the vast storehouse of experience it selects various elements and combines them into a new creation. This new creation may corre- spond with something as it exists. Such is the process when one who has never seen the- Niagara Falls tries to put together such concepts as he has of water, falls, rocks, etc., so as to get a mental picture, in the main, like the real thing. This is sometimes called constructive conception. Yet a far more common process of the 40 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS constructive imagination is, not to repre- sent things as they are or were, but as they might be. As I look out of my window I can see the round, white dome of an astro- nomical observatory. I turn my face from it, and I have a mental picture of the dome exactly as it is or was a moment ago. That is an act of memory. But in my mind I can begin and modify the picture. I can make the dome twice as high, put windows in it, change its color to red, alter it in a thousand ways if I like. Such is imagination, — a representation, not of the dome as it is or was, but as it might be. It is this same faculty of constructive im- agination by which a Shakespeare created an "Othello" or a "King Lear." The im- agination cannot create an absolutely new thing. It must have materials with which to work, materials furnished by previous mental experiences. Starting with a given number of facts, either material or mental, it coordinates, recombines, adds, or sub- tracts, until an ideal is obtained. This is IMAGINATION 41 what the constructive imagination puts into the character, story, or whatnot, and the reader, following it, retraces in his own imagination the new process. The imagination, aside from its construc- tive agency, has another function which may be called the associative imagination. This is the process by which the mind discovers similarity in things which, in the main, are unlike, and thus makes a comparison. It lies at the basis of such figures of speech as the simile, metaphor, and personification. Oliver Goldsmith had seen some tall moun- tain lifting its head above the storm-clouds which raged far up its heights. While the storm in its greatest fury swept the side of the mountain its top stood calm and serene in the glittering sun, far above and undis- turbed by the turmoil of the elements. With this in mind, he describes his old father who, in all the tempests of life, maintained the dignified calm of a great soul. In giving us this description, Goldsmith has created what some critics think is the finest simile in English : 42 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "Like some tall cliff, that rears its awful form, Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head." It is the associative imagination also which enables the mind to interpret lower life and inanimate things in terms of human life. The unimaginative mind sees nothing but the brute or the insensate thing. Under the spell of imagination these are endowed with human qualities. Characteristics are read into them which touch our sympathies and arouse in us a feeling of nearest kinship with all which that implies. It is this faculty that has made so popular the modern ani- mal stories of Mr. Thompson-Seton and W. J. Long. It is also the faculty that enabled Lowell to see far more in the little brook than a mere stream encased in ice. He beheld a sensate thing, a conscious archi- tect, endowed with skill and a wonderful sense of the beautiful. When the chill wind crept down from the mountain peak, covered with snow five thousand summers old, IMAGINATION 43 "The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams ; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one : No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter palace of ice." The product of the associative imagina- tion, while beautiful and pleasing, has never reached the sublime merit attained by that of the constructive imagination. All other things being equal, that literature is the greatest in which the imagination has created new and noble ideal characters such as are found in "Homer" and the plays of Shakespeare. 44 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS THOUGHT The literary quality of a production is determined by its power to stir the emotions. In pure literature this is the first result sought. Poetry and fiction of this class seek primarily to give pleasure, and yet, when we pass beyond the childhood literature of rhyme and jingle, thought is everywhere fundamental. The deep and sane emotions are always based on fundamental truths. Poetry, the most emotional of all literature, must be estimated very largely by its under- lying thought. "Great books are always wise." The greatest poets are the men of ripest judgment, widest experience, and keenest insight into the meaning of life. The spirit of the nineteenth century finds its deepest significance in Tennyson, Brown- ing, Wordsworth, and Matthew Arnold. The most profound exponents of the phi- losophy of life are not the philosophers, but the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Mil- ton, and Goethe. Noble emotions presup- THOUGHT 45 pose noble thought, and literary preemi- nence is dependent upon the intellectual preeminence. In testing for thought the touchstone is truth, not fact. Literary thought may in- deed deal with facts, as in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast," Nansen's "Farthest North," or Stanley's "In Darkest Africa." These books are faithful records of fact, and they are at the same time notable literature. However, literature is not circumscribed by fact, but, in the main, deals with the larger term, truth. As Mr. Winchester says, "In works designed to stir the emotions, the facts are usually furnished by the imagina- tion, but the truths are those laws of human nature that govern our affections, passions, conduct, and determine our relations to each other." In other words, truth, in addi- tion to fact, consists of those great princi- ples of life which the race has evolved out of its centuries of experience and exalted into law. To question the facts of literature is not necessarily to impeach its truth. No one supposes for a moment that the things 46 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS recorded in Shakespeare's "Othello" ever took place. The underlying thought, how- ever, is profoundly true and may be summed up in the statement that unwarranted jeal- ousy, carried to its logical conclusion, de- stroys not only the object of jealousy, but the jealous person. Myth, folk lore, and fairy tale, which some good people condemn absolutely as false, find their justification here. That they may not deal at all with facts may be freely granted, but with equal freedom and absolute certainty it may be asserted that they are true. In them the divine attributes of goodness, courage, jus- tice, beauty, purity, and whatever else may belong in this category, are eternally tri- umphant. Truth, while embracing fact, is a larger term, and it goes without saying that it is a sine qua non of children's books. No matter how deep the emotion or mar- vellous the imagination, a book is valueless unless its truth is convincing. FORM 47 FORM The fourth element to be considered in the tests for literature is its form. This is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its purpose is to furnish an adequate ex- pression for the emotion, imagination, and thought. It is not something to be deter- mined arbitrarily, but should grow out of the nature of the material and the purpose of the author. In the total estimate of a pro- duction it is of the greatest importance. Form and content must be congruous. Form may be compared to a vehicle of which emo- tion, imagination, and thought are the pas- sengers. If the vehicle is faulty or breaks down, the passengers suffer. It must be in keeping with its burden and so designed and articulated as to reach the end of the journey in the most easy, direct, and satis- factory way. Just as a vehicle must be adapted to its load, so must form be adapted to content. The simplicity of Wordsworth's child poems requires a diction and verse- 48 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS form to match it, while the majesty and tremendous sweep of "Paradise Lost" re- quire a form entirely different. The su- premely great literature is that which has great thought, great imagination, great emotion, and great form harmoniously com- bined. Such perfection is not often at- tained. It usually happens that either some particular element overshadows the others, or that some one of the four is particularly weak. This is often found true of the entire work of an author. Browning is especially noted for the depth of his thought, Tennyson for his perfection of form, Keats for sensuous passion, and Scott for imagination. It is not within the plan of this book to enter into an exhaustive discussion of form. This must be left to books of rhetoric and poetics. There are, however, a few com- mon, fundamental principles that must be taken into consideration by every teacher in making selections for school work. First, is the style clear ? Are the words chosen especially for their aptness and with a due FORM 49 reference to their delicate shades of mean- ing and associations ? Is the content easily grasped as soon as one knows the meaning of the words and the figures of speech ? Are the grammatical constructions correct, the sentences clear-cut and logical in se- quence, the paragraphs unitary and con- secutive in thought? Second, style to be effective must have force. It must stimu- late the mind, disturb its passivity, give it a sort of shock or challenge. There must be in it something of intenseness, a vigor and impressiveness that carries conviction. This is the quality of style that, more than any other, comes from character. Its prin- cipal bases are emotion and will, and to these faculties of the reader it makes its chief appeal. The third fundamental ele- ment of form is beauty. The longing for beauty in the human race seems almost as old and as strong as the longing for love. In style it is just as universal as clearness and force. Its function is to give pleasure. It seeks to avoid crudity, harshness, vul- garity, and everything that is offensive to 4 50 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS good taste. Beauty is the aesthetic quality of form, and roots itself in the imagination. It is preeminently the artistic element of style. A discussion of beauty leads at once into the field of poetry. Beauty is essential to poetry, but beauty alone will not make great poetry. If the beauty is a mere gilding for science, ethics, or religion, the poem suffers as poetry and also in its power to teach. In the highest poetry, truth, goodness, and beauty co-exist in certain wonderful unity, and are not absolute, separate entities, but phases of an absolute essence. Poetry is interested in the totality of life, but appre- hends it from the side of beauty. Its func- tion is to provide pleasure, beauty, in- struction, companionship with splendid personalities, and invigoration, elevation, and liberation of mind and soul. In an examination of poetry, or any form of literature, language-study is necessarily preliminary. Textual criticism is often in- valuable. Questions of date and author- ship may be of great importance. Authors' lives and times furnish helpful sidelights. FORM 51 Right standards are to be sought in the laws of mind and the practice of great poets. As far as possible, the personal equation must be eliminated. Intelligent criticism demands appreciation, sincerity, sympathy, accuracy, and definiteness. My experience with students in college and teachers in the grades constrains me to enter somewhat fully into definitions and descriptions of poetry and the relation of verse to substance. The statements which follow may be helpful : "Epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithy- rambics are, in the most general view of them, imitations. The poet must necessar- ily, when he imitates, have in view one of these three objects: he must represent things such as they were and are, or such as they are said to be and believed to be. If it be objected to the poet that he has not represented things conformably to truth (fact), he may answer that he has repre- sented them as they should be. And this is the proper answer. The imitations of poetry should resemble the paintings of 52 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Zcuxis; the example should be more per- fect than nature. It is not by writing in verse or prose that the historian and the poet are distinguished. The work of Herod- otus might be versified, but it would still be a species of history. They are distin- guished by this, that the one relates what has been, the other what might be. On this account poetry is a more philosophical and a more excellent thing than history; for poetry is chiefly conversant about gen- eral truth, history about particular." — Aristotle. "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned ex- pression which is in the countenance of all science." — Wordsworth. Poetry "is an art of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, by the production of as much pleasure in parts as is compatible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole; or, it is the art of communicating whatever we wish to communicate so as both to express and produce excitement, but for the purpose FORM 53 of immediate pleasure; and each part is fitted to afford as much pleasure as is com- patible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole." — Coleridge. "A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one. A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure; all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and hap- piest minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, elevating and delightful beyond all expression; it is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over sea, which the morning calm erases, and whose tracks re- main only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of the ethereal world. Poetry thus makes 54 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the Divinity in man. Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is deformed. Its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life, it strips the veil of familiarity from the world and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms." — Shelley. Poetry "is the rhythmic creation of beauty." — Poe. "Poetry is the presentment, in musical form, to the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions." — Ruskin. Poetry is "a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." — Matthew Arnold. "Poetry may be considered to be the gift of moving the affections through the im- agination, and its object to be the beauti- ful." — Newman. FORM 55 "Absolute poetry is rhythmical, imagina- tive language, expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the human soul." — Stedman. "Poetry is a representation and interpre- tation in language of life viewed in its unity, but from the standpoint of beauty, and is therefore ideal, imaginative, passion- ate, concrete, in structure unitary, in expres- sion beautiful and musical." — Bronson. The language of poetry should be natural, that is, suited to the thought and feeling. In determining what language is suited to the thought and feeling, the broad, general standard is the language of real life. The reason for this is, that poetry, in the broadest view of it, is a representation of real life by means of language. Hence, if a poet's rep- resentation of life is to be natural, his lan- guage must conform to the language of real life. "If the poet's subject be judiciously chosen, it will naturally, and upon fit occa- sion, lead him to passions, the language of which, if selected truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated, 56 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS and alive with metaphors and figures." — Wordsworth. Since poetry is an artistic representation of life, with a purpose to give pleasure and to reveal the ideal in the actual, the law of realism is modified by the art-law of ideal- ism. The poet may modify the language of real life negatively by rejecting unpleas- ant expressions ; positively, by using meter, rhyme, and " poetic" language. Just how far this modification of the language of real life may be carried legitimately cannot be determined by rigid rules. Much depends upon the type of the poem and the degree of idealism aimed at. But it is a manifest fault when certain modes of expression harden into a conventional "poetic" style. Such a style violates the fundamental law of artistic expression, namely, that form should be determined from within, by the spirit of the work, and not be mechanically imposed from without. Poetical language as a whole depends upon the thought and feeling with which it is charged, but the poetry of indi- vidual words varies according to their sound FORM 57 and their associations. Not infrequently an expression, prosaic by itself, may contribute to the poetical tone of the poem as a whole by heightening the homely realism which is the basis of the poem's peculiar effect. In the total effect of a poem sound plays an important part. Rhyme is a partial identity of sound in two or more words or syllables and is most common at the end of lines. In rhyming lines the last verse- accented vowels and all the sounds that follow them are identical; of the initial consonants in the last verse-accented sylla- bles, at least one must be different. Allit- eration is the repetition of the same sound, usually a consonant, at the beginning of syllables. It is noticeable in proportion to the strength of the sounds and the number and frequency of the repetitions. Latin poetry is not measured like English by accent and rhyme, but by the length of its syllables. Each syllable is counted as long or short in "quantity" and a long sylla- ble is equal in length to two short ones. Quantity plays a subordinate part in Eng- 58 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS lish verse. Syllables vary in length accord- ing to the length and number of their vowels and consonants, as, go, on, far, fat, boot, but, fine, fin, crunch, cut, etc. Tone-color is the quality of sounds, due to their overtones. Both vowels and consonants differ from each other in fullness, richness, depth, and pleasantness of sound. All these heighten the poetical effect. They are forms of beauty, and beauty is the atmosphere of poetry. A peculiar fitness of verse to substance is often found : Long stanzas are adapted to thoughts and feelings of long sweep or pulse; complex stanzas, to complex or ornate substance; short, simple stanzas fit simplicity of thought. Run-on lines express impetuosity, ease, and freedom. Long lines give a sense of continuance, majesty, dragging hopelessness, etc. Short lines suggest strength, — grimness, stabs, blows, etc. ; weakness, — littleness, plaintiveness, sob-like agony, etc. ; and fluctuation, — fickleness, distraction, spright- liness, etc. FORM 59 Quick lines suggest haste, rapidity, fear, joy, etc. ; slow lines denote deliberation, majesty, sublimity, heavy sorrow, ponder- ous strength, etc. The movement of lines depends upon the quantity of syllables, com- binations of vowels and consonants, group- ing of accents, etc. Accent on the first syllable of a line sug- gests eagerness, suddenness, emphasis, etc. Extra syllables at the beginning of a line suggest haste, animation, etc. ; at the end of a line, playfulness, delicacy, pity, etc. The lower vowels, aw, oo, o, etc., express "solemnity, horror, deep grief, slowness of motion and great size." Vowels higher in the scale, i, e, a, express "joy, gaiety, trivi- ality, rapid movement, delicacy, and phy- sical littleness." P, t, and k express "un- expectedness, vigor, explosive passion and startling effects of all kinds; z and zh are rich, pleasant colors." Smooth I and r are used for " smoothness, softness, liquidity, lingering, and love." S, sh, h and wh ex- press "fear, secrecy, deception, caution, and mystery." 60 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Rhyme heightens the music, color and ornamentation in general. Hence, it is adapted to lyrics, sentimental, fanciful, and merely beautiful subjects. Blank verse is more majestic, free, and plain. Therefore, it is better adapted to epic, dramatic, and reflective poetry. Verse is distinguished from prose by a certain regularity of movement, called rhythm, or meter. "Rhythm, in its most comprehensive sense, is the recurrence of similar phenomena at regular intervals of space or time." In English verse, rhythm is secured by the regular recurrence of accents. Verse is further distinguished from prose by division into lines, or verses, whose length is governed by some law of corres- pondence. The unit of the line is the foot. The principal kinds of feet are illustrated by the following words: Iambus — before; trochee — after; ana- pest — heretofore; dactyl — rapidly; spon- dee — gold-crowned; pyrrhic — in the; amphibrach — endurance; amphimacer — nip-and-tuck. FORM 61 A caesura is a pause for metrical effect in- side a. line. A line may have one, two, or more caesuras, or it may have none. The nature of a line depends upon the kind and number of its feet. As determined by the kind of feet, lines are iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, etc. As determined by the number of feet, lines are monometer, (one foot), diameter (two feet), trimeter (three feet), tetrameter or quadrimeter (four feet), pentameter (five feet), hexameter (six feet), heptameter (seven feet), octameter (eight feet). By combination we have, iambic trimeter, trochaic tetrameter, etc. A stanza is a group of lines bound to- gether into some degree of unity by some law of form. The nature of a stanza depends upon the number, arrangement, and length of its lines. Some of the most common stanzas are the couplet, triplet, quatrain, rhyme royal, ottava rima, and Spenserian. 1 1 For further details, consult "English Versification," by James C. Parsons, published by Sibley & Co., Boston. 62 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS APPLICATION OF TESTS The practical application of literary tests is the measure of their value. Suppose that Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" lies be- fore us for the first time and we wish to de- termine its literary worth and its fitness for school work. Let us examine a part of the third chapter, "Hiawatha's Childhood," } be- ginning with line sixty-four and continuing to the end of the chapter. Applying first the tests for emotion, we find the following stand out with more or less prominence : 1. Wonder. Lines 64-73: "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea- Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea- Water. 1 By permission of Houghton, Mifflin Company, the author- ized publishers of Mr. Longfellow's works. APPLICATION OF TESTS 63 2. Fear. Lines 74-85: "There the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, ' Hush ! the Naked Bear will hear thee ! ' Lulled him into slumber, singing, 'Ewa-yea! my little owlet!' 3. Mystery. Lines 86-97: "Many things Nokomis taught him Of the stars that shine in heaven ; Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, Ishkoodah with fiery tresses; Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs, Flaring far away to northward In the frosty nights of winter ; Showed the broad white road in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, Running straight across the heavens Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. 4. Peace. Lines 98-110: "At the door on summer evenings Sat the little Hiawatha; Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, 64 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Heard the lapping of the waters, Sounds of music, words of wonder; 'Minne-wawa !' said the pine-trees. 'Mudway-aushka !' said the water. Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of his candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him: 5. Joij. Lines 111-116: " ' Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect, Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids ! ' 6. Wonder and mystery. Lines 117-135: "Saw the moon rise from the water Rippling, rounding from the water, Saw the flecks and shadows on it, Whispered, 'What is that, Nokomis?' And the good Nokomis answered: 'Once a warrior, very angry, Seized his grandmother and threw her Up into the sky at midnight; Right against the moon he threw her; 'T is her body that you see there.' APPLICATION OF TESTS 65 Saw the rainbow in the heaven, In the eastern sky, the rainbow, Whispered, 'What is that, Nokomis?' And the good Nokomis answered : ' 'T is the heaven of flowers you see there ; All the wild-flowers of the forest, All the lilies of the prairie, When on earth they fade and perish, Blossom in that heaven above us.' 7. Terror. Lines 136-143: "When he heard the owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, ' What is that ? ' he cried in terror, 'What is that,' he said, 'Nokomis?' And the good Nokomis answered: 'That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at each other.' 8. Kinship with animals. Lines 144- 158: "Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in summer, Where they hid themselves in winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them 'Hiawatha's Chickens.' 5 66 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them ' Hiawatha's Brothers.* 9. Expectancy. Lines 159-172: "Then Iagoo, the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, He the traveller and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak-bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord he made of deer-skin. Then he said to Hiawatha: 'Go, my son, into the forest, Where the red deer herd together, Kill for us a famous roebuck, Kill for us a deer with antlers ! ' 10. Pride. Lines 173-175 : "Forth into the forest straightway All alone walked Hiawatha, Proudly with his bow and arrows; APPLICATION OF TESTS 07 11. Trust and pure delight. Lines 17G- 192: "And the birds sang round him, o'er him, 'Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!' Sang the robin, the Opechee, Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, 'Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!' Up the oak-tree, close beside him, Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, In and out among the branches, Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, Laughed and said between his laughing, ' Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! ' And the rabbit from his pathway Leaped aside, and at a distance Sat erect upon his haunches, Half in fear and half in frolic, Saying to the little hunter, ' Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! ' 12. Concentration. Lines 193-198 : "But he heeded not, nor heard them, For his thoughts were with the red deer; On their tracks his eyes were fastened, Leading downward to the river, And as one in slumber walked he. 13. Suspense. Lines 199-219 : "Hidden in the alder-bushes, There he waited till the deer came, 68 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Till he saw two antlers lifted, Saw two eyes look from the thicket, Saw two nostrils point to windward, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. And his heart within him fluttered, Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer came down the pathway. Then, upon one knee uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah ! the singing, fatal arrow ; Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him ! 14. Pity. Lines 220-222 : "Dead he lay there in the forest, By the ford across the river; Beat his timid heart no longer. 15. Exultation. Lines 223-227: "But the heart of Hiawatha Throbbed and shouted and exulted, As he bore the red deer homeward, And Iagoo and Nokomis Hailed his coming with applauses. APPLICATION OF TESTS 69 16. Approbation. Lines 228-235 : "From the red deer's hide Nokomis Made a cloak for Hiawatha, From the red deer's flesh Nokomis Made a banquet in his honor. All the village came and feasted, All the guests praised Hiawatha, Call him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha ! Call him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee ! " Judged from the standpoint of the emotions, this little bit of Hiawatha is noteworthy. The range and variety are re- markable. There are at least sixteen dif- ferent central emotions, some of which shade off into others not so clearly defined. These primal feelings are of the highest rank. They are universal, as equally an elemental part of the emotional life of the white child as of the Indian. Out of won- der and mystery is born intellectual curiosity. Through the feeling of kinship with animals is generated the principle of altruism. Pride and approbation stimulate to worthy effort. Fear and terror, lurking in each soul, a heri- tage of the far-away savage and cave- 70 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS dweller, are aroused, only to be allayed by the skilful old Nokomis. The whispering pine-trees, the lapping waters, and the flitting firefly, the trust of squirrel and opechee, speak of a peace and joy as calm and ele- mental as mother nature herself. There are no more healthful emotions of the child than these, and the vividness with which they appeal even to adults, is scarcely surpassed. Their continuity is unbroken and there is not a moment in which the soul is not pulsing with some passion. The exercise of the imagination is hardly less wonderful than that of the feelings. All forms are found, especially the constructive. The mind is asked to create a series of pic- tures, corresponding, in the main, to the scenes and events in Hiawatha's childhood. This it is asked to do by combining and modifying the great mass of material which every healthy boy and girl of six or seven years has acquired. Nature is much the same everywhere, and childhood experience and concepts have a large common element in all races. Under the stimulating efforts of APPLICATION OF TESTS 71 the creative imagination there may be seen as vividly as in real life the wigwam and its domestic life, the dark forest, the shining water, "Ishkoodah with fiery tresses," the pathway of the ghosts, the animals of the forest, the hunting of the deer, and the ban- quet. Nor are these merely individual creations but they are blended into a whole, a conception of the totality of the child- hood of Hiawatha, a sense of unity and completeness. Neither are the associative forms of the imagination lacking. The northern lights are the death-dance of the spirits ; the milky way is the pathway of the ghosts ; the flecks and shadows of the moon are the body of the angry warrior's grandmother; the rain- bow is the heaven of flowers ; these are some of the most vivid metaphors. Personification is also prominent. The owl and owlet talk and scold ; the birds are Hiawatha's chickens and the beasts are his brothers; the bluebird and the robin ask him not to shoot them ; and the squirrel and rabbit are humanized. This is what is 72 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS sometimes called the "interpretative imag- ination,' ' that insight by which it attributes human qualities to inanimate things and the lower forms of life. An examination of the thought shows that it represents truth and not fact. From many records of established fact we know what the Indian's life is like. We are well acquainted with his wigwam, domestic ar- rangements, clothing, hunting implements, and childlike habits of thought. The various incidents of the lines quoted may very well correspond to things exactly as they, at various times and in various places, have happened. But that they are all as here set down part of the real experiences of a real Indian boy called Hiawatha, neither Longfellow, nor anyone else ever sup- posed. In that sense they do not represent fact at all. The whole thing is an idealized representation of Indian life and is true to its spirit. It stands for truth in a far deeper and broader sense than any mere repre- sentation of fact. Things are represented in causal relationship and logical perspective. APPLICATION OF TESTS 73 The individual facts of life are in a way fragmentary and it is only when they are seen in their totality, and spiritually inter- preted, that the meaning of life is discovered. Mental processes, motives of conduct, and the principles of living, are laid bare, and truth in its largest and best sense appears. Such is the thought in this bit of Hiawatha. The fourth element, form, is in its sphere as remarkable as the other three. The thought, imagination, and emotion are those of a childlike race, and the form shows its outgrowth from them. It is not original with Longfellow, but is imitated from the Kalevala, the Finnish epic. This is a prim- itive song and was composed during the childhood of the race and is the natural ex- pression of people at that stage of develop- ment. Poetry always precedes prose and, in primitive life, is not far removed from every day speech. Certain elements in them are common and universal. Poetry is naturally the speech of childhood races. The primitive mind projects itself into everything. This is reflected in the fine 74 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS personifications of the comet as Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses; the milky way as the pathway of the ghosts; the rainbow as the heaven of flowers ; and the little animals as Hiawatha's brothers. The style, full of descriptions of nature, its easy, rapid verses and simple rhythm, the abundance of Indian dialect and names, its half-dramatic manner, — all these re- flect the artistic simplicity of the poem, fragrant with woods and meadows, fresh with sky and water, breezy with north and west winds, mellowed by the myths of an untutored race. Even the monotonous effect which a long reading in it produces, re-echoes the long-drawn-out chant of the mystic ceremonies, the measured tramping of feet in the dance, and the continuous beating of the tom-tom. The intellectual and emotional qualities of the whole thing are made fascinating "With the odors of the forest, With the dews and damps of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers." TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 15 These qualities are mimicked by the form. "The short phrases and simple sentences, the frequent repetitions and parallelisms, the quick trochaic movement, the absence of rhyme or stanza, suggest the childlike character of these legends, and the sway- ing boughs, quivering leaves, and leaping brooks the music of which they were first narrated. — Bronson. A review of the tests made reaches the conclusion that this is literature of the high- est rank and especially suited to children. Some such test as this can be applied to any piece of writing and should be done before it is offered as school work. Only that which is best and suitable should be given to children. TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM Literature may be likened to a mighty, flowing river. Its source lies closely hidden in the dark kingdom of savage man. In- 76 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS numerable tributaries have swelled its bur- den, some so insignificant that they are en- tirely lost in the parent stream. Others there are of such magnitude that their waters have left a permanent tinge on the great current. Of these I wish to speak briefly. First of all in importance is the King James Version of the Bible. Any study of English literature worthy the name must take this book into account. It is indispen- sable, — it is not possible to omit it. Our language is thoroughly saturated with in- numerable references to it. We meet at every turn such expressions as "Joshua's moon," "Aaron's rod," "the driving of Jehu," "the grapes of Canaan," "another Golgotha," "a mess of pottage," "a Joseph," "the fiery furnace," "the still, small voice," "the prodigal son," "the brazen serpent," etc. It is practically impossible to read even our simplest prose and poetry without a tolerably wide and accurate knowledge of the Bible. The fabric of English thought is so inter- woven with the golden threads of the Bible TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 77 that it is not possible to remove them with- out destroying the fabric. This wonderful book has shaped the faith and thought of Europe and America. It is the foundation of our intellectual heritage. Its power to move the imagination and stir the emotions is unsurpassed. This power does not lie within the religious sphere alone, but non- religious men find in it a marvelous uplift, and unbelievers testify to its greatness. Its message is to the simple and the learned alike. For generations, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was the one book of most households. Its aus- tere simplicity and terrible earnestness burned themselves into the language, the thought, and the spirit of English-speaking peoples. Mr. Gardner, in "The Bible as English Literature," aptly says: "The silent, unhurrying rumination of the East makes our modern flood of literature seem garrulous and chattering. ... It has no pride of art, no interest in the subjective impressions of the writer, no care even for the preservation of his name." 78 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS As a literary production, the King James Version is the most important prose compo- sition in English. It is a classic, flashing with splendor. As English prose, it is the most idiomatic and virile in the language, — the ultimate standard. Children should be taught to read the Bible with intelligence and with delight. It is naturally attractive, and should be made so in study. It is full of great stories, beautiful poetry, fascinating biography, and at least one magnificent drama. If properly presented, these are the delight of children because they are full of fancy and move- ment. To know and love them is a part of their birthright, and they must be acquainted with the finer portions in order to be appre- ciative readers of our literature. A second great tributary of the stream is folk lore. Its tales, like the Bible, are so inextricably interwoven into our thought and language that they cannot be removed. They are the products of the infancy of the race and make their appeal forever to child- hood. The common stock of the imagina- TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 79 tion and emotion of humanity is found in them. They bring children face to face with human experience in its infancy. This primal atmosphere is like that in which the child six or seven years old is living. He turns all things into wonderful creations. A broomstick becomes a horse, and he has no trouble in hearing birus and beasts talk. These folk tales do not teach the child un- truth. Far back in his mind he knows these stories are not realities and he may be frankly told so. They bear the same relation to fact and truth that the great novels of Scott and Hawtho.ne do. We demand this sort of thing for adults dsid it is absolutely illogical to shut the child up to the hard facts and realities of life. Moreover, if he I ; to be an intelligent reader, he must sooner or later make the acquaintance of a large body of this material. If this acquaintance is put beyond the years of childhood, there is an immense loss of time, energy, and pleasure. These stories also embody the profound- est moral elements of the race. They point 80 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS out the struggle against pride, greed, selfish- ness, cowardice, etc. The help of fairies is never given to the wicked and the lazy. Ar- rogance and selfishness invariably come to grief. There is a clear outcome for every deed. The child has a concrete sense of right and wrong. This need is met and satisfied by the concrete illustration of fairy tales. The action is clearly defined. The emotions and motives are simple and funda- mental. There are hardships to be endured, wicked foes and cruel giants to be overcome. Fairies and friendly beasts give aid. Noth- ing is too small or insignificant to be taken into account. Even a Tom Thumb can do something and a cat made Whittington's fortune. There is a wonderful democracy, too, about these tales. The true dignity of people, as such, is prominent. It is a real acquaint- ance that the child gets with the henwife, the cowherd, the tailor, the miller, and the rest. They form a real world with real people in it. Kings and queens are also in this democracy. One may stand in the TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 81 presence of the king counting his money, and see the queen baking tarts. Fairy tales foster a love and sympathy for animals. They are full of animal life. The relation between man and animals is very close and very free. This is the primitive man's idea. All are from a common stock. Certain Indian tribes believe their ancestors were antelopes or wolves, or some animals. In late years the animal stories have had a wonderful vogue, but even the best of them are not comparable to the old tales such as "Reynard the Fox." On the imaginative side these old tales seek to harmonize the realities of the world. The play of fancy is most free and pleasure- able. Dark and mysterious nature is over- come by genii, giants, and fairies. Man is made master of the powers of darkness. The same wonderful fancy of primitive folk anticipated in some part the marvellous constructive conception which has revealed the mysteries of modern science. And how foolish to cavil at the fancies of fairy tales and accept, as we must, such wonders as the 6 82 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS wireless telephone and telegraph ! The scientific world of to-day is no more to be understood without the aid of the imagina- tion than was the world of primitive man. Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie aptly says: "The fairy tale belongs to the child and ought always to be within his reach, not only because it is his special literary form and his nature craves it, but because it is one of the most vital of the text-books offered to him in the school of life. In ultimate importance it outranks the arithmetic, the grammar, the geography, the manuals of science; for without the aid of the imagination none of these books is really comprehensible." A third tributary, itself a mighty river, are the myths and legends of the Greek, the Roman, the Teuton, and the Indian. Like the Bible and fairy tale, these have become an inseparable part of our literature and are held by it as in solution. The references to them are legion. We scarcely think of the origin of "Herculean task," "dark as Ere- bus," "the Halcyon days," "the thread of life," etc. The names of the days of the TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 83 week and the months of the year no longer recall the heroes of story and song. The undying vitality of this priceless heritage has become a part of our life and thought. The classic myths and legends, especially, have in them more of beauty, greater power and dignity, than what I have characterized as folk lore. The action is for the most part on a higher plane. The heroes perform their mighty deeds mostly for others. Their undying fame is achieved in altruistic en- deavor. The hero himself may suffer and sin, the burden of life may seem unendura- ble, the mystic shadow of fate may shut out for a time life's joyousness, but in the end he is triumphant. His achievement adds something to the sum of human joy, either for himself or for his people. The age of myth takes us back to the dawning of intelligence. The "vision splen- did" of a new world seeks interpretation. The imperishable answers of men are these fine old tales. Dr. Charles McMurry says: "To read these old heroic epics is to taste of the very spirit and conditions of our an- 84 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS cestors in this period of youthful exuber- ance. He who touches these living stones has his hands upon the primitive strength of European culture. . . . For the child there- fore to drink of these fountains, is to ac- quire a vantage for the appreciation of later ideas and institutions." (Special Method in Reading, p. 35.) Of this material Presi- dent G. Stanley Hall says: "They are pro- foundly true, not to the external world, as the child knows and may be freely told, but to the heart and the world within. With the good as the pretty, and the bad as the ugly, and the ethical judgment exercised where it is sure to go right, mythic forms are about as near pure object teaching as ethics can get." (How to Teach Reading, p. 22.) Childhood's democracy finds its counter- part here in wonderful likeness. Charles Kingsley says we must think of the Greeks "As a country people, living in farms and walled villages, in a simple, hard-working way; so that the greatest kings and heroes cooked their own meals and thought it no shame, and made their own ships and weap- TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 85 ons, and fed and harnessed their own horses ; and the queens worked with their maid- servants, and did all the business of the house, and spun, and wove, and embroid- ered, and made their husbands' clothes and their own. So that a man was honored among them, not because he happened to be rich, but according to his skill, and his strength, and courage, and the number of things he could do. For they were but grown up children, though they were right noble children too; and it was with them as it is now at school; the strongest and cleverest boy, though he be poor, leads all the rest." (Preface to Greek Heroes.) The central core of genuine myth is no doubt a religious idea. But in school work this ought to be a negligible quantity. The myths, just as the hero tales and legends, are to be treated as story. Children should be allowed to revel in the fancy and emotion they contain, to be thoroughly saturated with their life and ideals, to love them, so they will have a desire and an equipment to read the great books of Homer and Vergil, 86 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS and the Greek dramas. Pleasure, taste, equipment, and desire should never be lost sight of. Another tributary of wondrous beauty and great volume is the chivalric stream. No other influence was so deep and widespread throughout the middle ages upon all the literatures of Europe. The romances and legends which cluster around Christian chivalry have caught the essence of that mys- terious and fascinating life and embalmed it in story and song. Here belong the Ar- thurian legends, the Charlemagne romances, Chretien, Malory, the Robin Hood talcs, and "The Song of Roland." From this source Wagner drew his material for the stories of his operas. Here Spenser found his great inspiration and gave it back to us in "The Fairy Queen." The immortal "Don Quixote" is a burlesque upon the romances of knight errantry. Tennyson's "Idyls of the King" is one of its finest off- springs, and most of the poets of note have drunk at the fountain-head of chivalry. The incomparable beauty of these romances, TRIBUTARIES OF THE LITERARY STREAM 87 their undying fame, and their significance in the meaning of life, make them one of the richest elements of our literature. There is no such thing as a cultured English scholar who does not know these charming tales. The last literary tributary that I wish to speak of is Shakespeare. A tiny rill, start- ing in obscurity and contempt three hundred years ago, it has flooded the world. The polite literatures of all nations have absorbed most of his great plays. In English he is almost as potent as the Bible. Much of his language is the current speech of the day. We know his great characters better than we do our friends. Hamlet, Falstaff, Othello, Cordelia, Iago, and a score of others are household words. The great plays take rank with the prophetic books of the world. With the Bible and Shakespeare we are incomparably rich, and without them un- speakably poor, and I speak from the stand- point of literature. It seems to me that the study of these five influences, the Bible, folk lore, the myth, chivalry, and Shakespeare, is not a matter 88 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS of choice, — it is an obligation laid upon every teacher. Education is a preparation for a complete living. We are prone to think it is a preparation for life after school days are over. This is a great mistake. Education ought to be made effective every day. It should be a participation in living every moment. The greatest possible amount of delight, consistent with duty, should be each child's portion in school. His effort should be progressive and directed. In the field of literature, this progressive partici- pation in life is so clearly marked and so easy to follow that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. Two great bene- fits accrue to the children. First, and pri- mary, the acquaintance with the literature for its own sake. In the ultimate analysis, this may be the only valid reason, but from a practical viewpoint, this acquisition fur- nishes an equipment with which the owner is able to read in many fields with ease and satisfaction. And this is not to be despised. A course in literature for the grades ought to look carefully to these results. PRESENTATION IN PRIMARY GRADES 89 PRESENTATION IN THE PRIMARY GRADES It happens that the best method of pres- entation in the very earliest grades is the only one, namely, oral presentation. Be- fore they reach school age or have even learned how to read, most children have ac- quired some knowledge of literature, — folk lore, fairy tales, nonsense verse, etc. This is the place for the school teacher to begin. No costly nor extensive library is necessary. Books for class use are not needed. The appeal is to be made, even for some time after the children can read, di- rectly, through the medium of the story. Of course the aim of all teaching is to make the child independent of the teacher, and he must be encouraged and directed to read for himself. But no doubt the greatest delight of children is found in reading what they have previously learned orally. It is like meeting an old friend. The story is the most fascinating as well as the most universal of all literary forms. 90 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The longing for it is primitive and undying. The finest and most lasting effects are se- cured when the story is told, not read. This brings in the personality of teller. The teacher must be for the time the creator of the story and must live it. Two objects must be kept always in view : First, that the story should give the keenest sense of pleas- ure. Second, the reaction of the children upon the story. The discussion of the story in detail with all its educational significance, would re- quire a book in itself. It is my purpose here to point out some of the most fundamental things only. First of all, comes the choice of stories. Every teacher must be more or less of a critic. This implies a knowledge of prin- ciples. These principles are to be the basis of a choice and not a mere liking for the stories. In selecting, the following things must be considered: 1. Material. — The mere stuff out of which the story is made must be suited to the taste and the needs of children. Gen- PRESENTATION IN PRIMARY GRADES 91 erally speaking, it must be the sort of stuff that the child can "bolt to the bran," — can both apprehend and comprehend. 2. Action. — For little people the story must be full of action. Something must be going on all the time. The movement must be straightforward, with little detail. The characters must do something, they must be active, not passive ; the motives of their ac- tion must be perfectly clear and simple. They are judged at once by the things they do. Little heed is given to the development of character. There is no time for it. The action stands out so clear-cut that people are either good or bad. It is only in more ad- vanced study that men are both good and bad. 3. Unity. — This is a fundamental art law. The thing must have a plan, — the parts must be fitted together. It is a literary edifice. All this involves the plot. This is a weaving together of various elements or threads. Things are complicated and con- ditions are modified. The cause of the prob- lem, as intrigue, jealousy, crime, etc., must 92 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS not only be clearly seen, but just how it works itself out into a solution. It must reach a goal, and when all is finished there must be a sense of completeness. Nothing must remain to be supplied. 4. Ethics. — The justice of the outcome must not be questionable. It must be clearly defined and definitely settled. Everyone must fare in the end according to his deserts. Beware the story that contains the subtle fascination of vice or the approval of trickery or downright wrong. Children demand, even more strongly than adults, absolute poetic justice. The conclusion must be for- tunate for the beautiful, the kind, the good, and the opposites are to be either left out of the rewards, or punished. Having chosen the story, the next thing is to know it, — not verbatim, except in cumu- lative stories and repetitive portions. The leading facts should be held in mind like a skeleton, and the details supplied spontane- ously. This method allows a certain aban- don and atmosphere not possible when the story is memorized. It also gives oppor- PRESENTATION IN PRIMARY GRADES 93 tunity to modify according to the needs of the audience and to enhance the charm by the personality of the teacher. It further pro- vides for naturalness in voice, gesture, and expression. There is a directness of effect not secured except by this free play of im- agination and spontaneity of composition. Gather the children close around you. Physical nearness promotes imaginative and emotional nearness. It takes rare power to be effective across any consider- able spaces. In many cases pictures, and especially the ability to use the blackboard, are of the greatest help. A rude picture, which the children see grow under the touch of the teacher, provided it illustrates the point, is usually more interesting and more valuable than a finished bit of art. The story having been presented, there ought to be immediate opportunity for dis- cussion of it by the children with the teacher. This discussion should take the form, in most part, of question and answer. Aimless chatter should be rigidly checked. Certain prominent facts must be made to stand out 94 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS and become fixed in the children's minds. In this part of the work, the wise teacher will not be too finical about the correctness of the child's language. Spontaneity is more important here, and a free play of thought and expression is to be sought. This flow of thought and language should not be ham- pered by interruptions except for flagrant violations. The next logical step on the part of the child is a retelling of the story. This should be in the child's own language. The material will lie in his mind in a more or less unorganized mass. It will be neces- sary for him to select, arrange, bring to a climax. This sense of order and goal is of the greatest educational significance. It keeps his attention longer and shows the relation of parts to each other and to the whole. It furnishes a model also for the synthesizing and retention of his own men- tal products. Under such a process there is developed an appreciation of logical ar- rangement, conciseness, beauty, and com- pleteness. This is the time also to see that PRESENTATION IN PRIMARY GRADES 95 the form of expression is correct. The lan- guage, as well as the material, must be in the best taste. If the selection happens to take the form of poetry, it should be memorized. Nothing is worthy of presentation to little people, in the form of poetry, which is not worth "learning by heart." They do it so easily, and at the same time store up for them- selves such incomparable riches of emo- tions, fancies, and ideas ! The repetition of these poems offers unsurpassed oppor- tunities for training the ear to hear beauti- ful sounds and training the voice to make them. How little attention is given to the making of full, beautiful tones ! The process of reproduction may take other valuable forms. The stories may be retold by a series of drawings, or by forms cut from paper. Many of the things men- tioned can be made by the children, thus securing at once a training of hand, eye, and brain. The desire to make things is one of the earliest and strongest. It ought to be systematically trained and developed. })() LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS All kinds of creative ability are precious, — precious on account of the educational process as well as for the product created. The dramatic instinct, strong in children, ought to be fostered. If left to themselves, they are natural actors. Let them drama- tize the stories, the whole class working to- gether in spontaneous, oral composition, and the teacher acting as recorder. The re- sult will be a joint-stock production. This was the way the primitive tale and ballad were composed. They have a flavor about them that no modern artist can reproduce. Such a production might well be staged in a simple fashion and offered for the en- tertainment of the school and its patrons. These things furnish intense delight, are ped- agogically sound, and eminently practical. THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES The universality of the story makes neces- sary a chapter for its study in the upper grades and for reading after school days. THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 97 The appetite for it extends to the ends of the world. Sailors in the far north spend the long nights poring over novels, and soldiers after a hot day's march are cooled and rested by their charm. The Arab sheik listens with rapture to his bard, and the sultan in "The Arabian Nights" forgets his bloody purpose under the spell of the thousand and one tales. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors revelled in stories, and the tales of Ulysses have fascinated all ages and na- tions. Stories are the delight of children, the joy of youth, the instruction of man- hood, and the comfort of old age. The most intellectual men are concerned with the lofty thought and profound emotion of great novels, and the most uncultured reader turns to tales of fiction that are within the range of his appreciation. From the savage to a Gladstone everybody loves a story. The motives for reading stories are as varied as the types of mind. The boy, if historically inclined, reads Scott; if one has a turn for science, he reads Jules Verne; 7 98 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS if for psychology, Henry James, etc. But the great common motives are amusement, rest, and recreation. They provide a relief from the humdrum of everyday life, they lift us into the realms of the ideal, they carry us as far as possible from ordinary pursuits. Maupassant, in his preface to " Pierre et Jean," says: "The public is composed of groups who say to us (novelists) : ' Con- sole me, amuse me, make me sad, make me sentimental, make me dream, make me laugh, make me tremble, make me weep, make me think.'" And finally there are a few people who demand a story as a work of art, something fine and exquisite. The first thing about a story to demand our attention is the plot. The word was originally complot and means a weaving to- gether. It is that which happens to the characters. Its basis is action, and it may deal with the experience and evolution of a single character. Hawthorne's "Wake- field" is a story of great interest. It is a psychological study of a man who imag- THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 99 ined it would be a good plan to remain away from home a certain night. He re- mained away twenty years. Usually the plot involves at least two characters and grows out of different forces brought into struggle. In "Silas Marner" the two forces are the love for a child and the embittered human nature in Silas. Again there is what Bliss Perry calls the three-leaved-clover relationship. This in- volves three characters in which the atti- tude of two of them to a third brings about a new line of action. As an example of this type Mr. Perry instances Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman's "The New England Nun." It is also exemplified in Chaucer's "Knight's Tale," by Palamon, Arcite, and Emily. Such a relationship may introduce tremendous lines of action, such as passion, fear, jealousy, etc. The plot includes also the setting as to time, place, and stratum of intellectual life. It corresponds pretty much to the scenery in a play. It is what painters call atmos- phere, and the scientists, environment. It 100 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS is always something which lies behind the characters and apart from them. In Scott, it is feudalism; in Bret Harte, the Cali- fornia mining camp; in Hamlin Garland, farming; in Howells, American democracy. The setting of a story is often one of the chief means of giving it unity, as the French Revolution in "Les Miserables," or the his- torical atmosphere of Queen Anne's time in " Henry Esmond." Landscape setting is often of the greatest importance. Mountains, stream, wood, etc., come to be a part of the story. In "Lorna Doone" it is impossible to dissociate story and landscape. The country is an essential part of the tale. Often the landscape setting seems to be used for mere vividness, as in "The Choir Invisible," and not infrequently is made to play an important part in the mental states and development of a char- acter, as Black Water Park in "The Woman in White." In general the main function of the plot is to sustain interest. The plot is equiva- lent to action, and action is concrete. In a THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 101 novel of incident, such as " Kenilworth," the plot is epic. In a novel of character, as "Silas Marner," the plot sinks to a sub- ordinate place. In an abstract novel, like Bellamy's "Looking Backward," the plot simply floats the characters. The effectiveness of a plot depends much upon the effectiveness of the material com- posing it. Action with some universal pas- sion, such as love, is most attractive. The material varies in interest with the reader, as jealousy, ambition, etc., appeal with dif- ferent degrees of force to different people. Whether a plot is interesting depends gen- erally on the intrinsic value it has for the reader. The interest may, however, de- pend upon the way in which the material is presented. There are various ways of increasing in- terest in the plot: 1. By giving the plot a vivid setting in description. Description gives life to a narrative by giving it a definite place. The Hegelian view of art is that environment should reflect the mental and emotional 102 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS states. In real life these agreements are rare, but they do occur. In all cases the description should never seem to exist for itself. 2. By concreteness in action. The plot should avoid vague abstractions and glit- tering generalities. 3. By direct onward movement. The gain when this method is used is one of clear- ness. At times, however, it is best to begin in the middle of things and after awhile go back and take up the beginning. The gain here is one of interest. 4. By rapid movement. This means a concise style, — all non-essentials omitted. Compare Stevenson's "Treasure Island" with Dickens's "Dombey and Son." The former gains immensely by the onward rush of movement. 5. By climax. The word "climax" means a ladder or staircase. It is commonly some scene or action which marks the greatest tension or the most important moment in the relation of characters. The killing of Polonius in "Hamlet " and the fall of Front- THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 103 de-Boeuf in "Ivanhoe" are climaxes. The common element of all climaxes is a crisis, and all the elements work toward this crisis. A climax not only intensifies the interest at the moment of crisis, but it heightens it all along the way by creating an expectancy. There are frequently minor climaxes which lure us on. 6. By mystery. This is a very effective element, largely because it excites curiosity. There are various ways of producing it. A common form is to give an effect but to withhold the cause. Frequently a climax is produced by the solution of a mystery. Climax and mystery may create suspense. 7. By a sense of unity. Unity may be of different kinds. In any case it implies co- ordination of parts to a common end, as in a bridge. Unity may be that of position only, as a number of marbles in a bag, or it may be one of time, or one of function, as Paul's organism. The unity of a plot may be lengthwise, from beginning to end. This happens when there is one thread, — one story. When there are several threads, 6r 104 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS stories, there must be a unity sidewise also. The unity lengthwise is the highest when a gives birth to b, b to c, etc., that is, a causal relation. Unity sidewise is harder to secure. Skill in story-writing, especially in long stories, consists largely in a skill in inter- weaving various threads. This applies also to the drama. There are two main types of the plot : (a). That which has one main thread and several subordinate ones. "The Merchant of Venice" is a good example of such a plot. (b). That which has two or more threads, almost cr quite equally important, at least for a while, and which finally converge. The plot of "Kenilworth" is like this. The love thread and the historic thread converge and are blended at Kenilworth. A complex plot gives mass and variety. A simple plot is to a complex plot as a melody is to a harmony, or the Greek Parthenon to St. Peter's Ca- thedral. For the acme of intensity, a com- plex plot must yield to one more simple. Take for example Balzac's " The Wild THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 105 Ass's Skin," or Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger." 8. By novelty. This may be of two kinds. First, novelty of material, as Kip- ling's Indian stories, or second, novelty of combination. 9. By 'probability. One instinctively asks is the action natural, is it probable ? If the conclusion is negative, the interest is gone except as for an extravaganza, such as Rider Haggard's "She." But after all, character is of more value than plot, — people are more fascinating than incidents. The greatest stories are those that possess the greatest characters. In the treatment of characters there are two processes. First, the conception of a char- acter, and second, the portrayal of it. Character-conception is fundamental to a great story-writer. There are qualities he must have: (a) A large nature. (b) Wide experience of men. (c) Spiritual sympathy, — power to put himself in another's place. 10G LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The character once conceived, it may be portrayed by: 1. Description of inward nature, external appearance, or past life. This is a favorite method of Scott, who stands his character on a pedestal, so to speak, and describes him. A frequent method of Hawthorne is to mention some suggestive or significant fact, as the doves which hover round Hilda's tower in "The Marble Faun." 2. Analysis of mental states. This is best adapted to subtle and psychical phases. George Eliot employs it freely and Henry James is one of its chief exponents. 3. Making the character talk and act. This is a movement from within outward. The conception of the character begets the expression and action. This method allows the reader to estimate the character much as he does in real life, by what the character says and does. What we call character is the sum of a person's traits. The difference in character may be due often to a difference in arrange- ment of traits. In the study of a character, THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 107 note what it does at certain crises. At such times a character does not act contrary to its real self. Its expression is sincere. The statements of other characters in the story must be taken with caution. Be careful of the influence of what persons in the plot say. One must also learn to distinguish between the different parts of a character and to look for motives. Note the ratio in which motives combine to determine action. Study devel- opment if there is one, both the facts and causes. Note the interaction of characters upon each other and the consequences. A good complex plot necessitates character grouping. Unity demands a subordination of side figures to central figures. Side figures are needed. They furnish a background, a necessity similar to that in a picture, which sets it off as a whole. The principal group may consist of a few, or it may be that the function of a group is performed by a single figure. A group must not consist of so many as to attract attention from the story as a whole. There must be grouping also for the sake 108 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS of variety. This furnishes restfulness. Just as we get rest by a change of occupation, so we get rest by a change of attention. Variety also gives positive pleasure. When grouping for variety is carried to the extreme, we get contrast. The usual result of contrast is vividness. And finally, there is grouping for the sake of interaction of one mind upon another. This results in dialogue, which has two factors : 1. The individualities of each speaker. 2. The influence which one speaker ex- erts upon another. A word about the purpose of stories may not be out of place. Some have an appar- ent and definite purpose, as "Nicholas Nickleby." Others have an ethical pur- pose, not so apparent, as "Vanity Fair." The purpose of some is to give a picture of life and some are just for entertainment. Some stories have one purpose only, as "Looking Backward," and others have several purposes, as "Romola." Every novel in a broad sense has a purpose. This aim, or purpose, determines its type. To THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 109 judge a story adequately, one must know what the writer is trying to do. On the basis of purpose stories may be grouped into three large classes: 1. Aesthetic. In this class are the sto- ries whose principal aim is to develop through pleasurable emotions a fine appreciation of the beautiful, in the various phases of life. "Pride and Prejudice" is a good example. 2. Didactic. The main purpose of these is to impart truth for its own sake. "Here- ward the Wake" in the historical field, and "Elsie Venner" in the scientific, are good examples. 3. Ethical. The predominant purpose here is to influence conduct, either of indi- viduals, or, as in "Alton Locke," of a whole community. In this class are to be found most of the superlatively great novels of the world. On the basis of the predominant means used, stories are classed as those of (a) inci- dent, or (b) character. "Kenilworth" il- lustrates the first class, and "Silas Marner" the second. 110 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The terms " realism " and " romance " are somewhat troublesome but must be grappled with sooner or later. Realism is a vague term. It usually means a close adherence to fact. The realist asserts that the truths of life are best illustrated in the common, every-day experiences and not in the exceptional ones. He aims to represent the familiar, such as one may readily verify. He protests against the romantic as abnormal. The extreme realist goes further. Not only is fidelity to fact a test of the best literature, but he insists that all the facts should be given. In regard to this view it may be said that all art, by nature of its material and its aim, departs from exact reproduction of life. The most extreme realist must select, ex- clude, and combine. He cannot tell us every- thing. This is, of course, an idealizing process. No characters act and speak ex- actly as in real life. They are represented at ideal moments. A literary catalogue of a man's acts and words would be intolerable, even if it were possible. On the other hand, "Romance is the ex- THE STORY IN THE UPPER GRADES 111 hibition of familiar motive in unfamiliar circumstance." "It is a device to bring out the bolder traits of character by the test of some unexpected incident." "Romantic literature is, for the most part, a picture of characters placed in such emergency and then acting and suffering as we think they ought." — Winchester. The means of the plot ought to vary with the purpose. In a story written merely to entertain, the plot must take precedence of everything else. The ethical novel of char- acter varies the plot to suit the characters. Commonplace characters require an ordin- ary plot. An historical novel requires descrip- tion. In short, a story takes to itself the fundamental elements in a proportion to suit the needs of that particular story. No one element should be pushed so far or reduced so low that the story as a whole loses its type. The greatest stories are those that combine the various elements of story struc- ture with the deepest and truest view of life. 112 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS A MODEL LESSON The Herbartian school of pedagogy has developed a "general method" of the pres- entation of a lesson founded upon the prin- ciples of apperception. This method, since it is based upon the way the mind acquires knowledge, is applicable to any subject. It has five formal steps, as follows : 1. Preparation. This does not mean the teacher's own preparation, which is taken for granted, but the preparation of the minds of the children by the teacher. It includes the assignment of the lesson and the skill in bringing the pupils into the right conscious attitude toward the new material. It is the process by which the old and more or less well-known ideas are awakened in the minds of the children, — ideas which are similar to the new one to be presented. It is the opera- tion of vivifying old and preconceived ideas which are in some way related to the new thought. It is causing in the child a con- sciousness of the known in order that he may A MODEL LESSON 113 pass to the related unknown. This prepara- tion may be the work of a few moments or it may require several recitation periods. In any case, it is vital and may not be trusted to chance. 2. Presentation. A successful presenta- tion presupposes a knowledge of the minds of the children. Something more than the basic principles is necessary. The skillful teacher seeks out the peculiarities of her boys and girls and makes her presentation fit them. Of course, there must be a thorough knowledge of the matter to be presented and the ways of presentation. Finally, there must be skill on the part of the teacher, — a skill which comes from an accurate, scien- tific knowledge of her task, and experience in doing it. 3. Comparison. This may be stated as keeping the minds of the pupils fixed upon the new material and such experi- ences or knowledge of their own as will help them to interpret the new truth in familiar ideas. It is a practice in discov- ering likenesses and differences, an exer- 114 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS rise in distinguishing between the similar and the same. 4. Generalization. This means leading children to draw correct conclusions. The generalization should never be considered complete until stated in clear, concise lan- guage. An accurate use of language neces- sitates accurate thinking. 5. Application. Herein comes the skill in making the children realize the truth as per- sonal possession. It includes the conception which the child ought to get, that school problems are in a very vital way problems of life. Suppose the reading lesson is the follow- ing poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes. OLD IRONSIDES "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar; — The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. A MODEL LESSON 115 "Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee; The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea ! "Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave : Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale !" An intelligent and appreciative study of such a poem means far more than the correct pronunciation of the words, the looking up of a few allusions, the acquirement of some definitions, and the getting of the thought. It is not to be mastered in one recitation period. The teaching of a thing like this, or any other bit of literature worth giving to children, means comprehension with all which that word implies. Let us see what 11G LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS develops under an application of our pro- posed method. 1. The Preparation. The facts connected with the occasion which produced this poem must be placed before the minds of the chil- dren. This may be done in part by the teacher in one or more talks, and in part by sending pupils to various books, periodicals, etc., for information they are able to gather. The poem first appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser, September 16, 1830. " Old Ironsides" is the popular name for the frig- ate Constitution. She was so called, not because her sides were made of iron, but on account of the hardness of her planking and timbers. Some of her timbers are perfectly sound to-day. Her keel was laid in Boston, 1794, and she was launched October 21, 1797. During the war with Tripoli, 1801- 1805, she was Preble's flagship. In the War of 1812 she made two notable captures, — the Guerriere and the Java. The former was left a wreck after thirty minutes' fighting, and the latter was captured after a two hours' struggle. In 1830, she was reported unsea- A MODEL LESSON 117 worthy and the Secretary of the Navy recom- mended that she be dismantled. The order was revoked in deference to the sentiment aroused by Holmes' poem. The vessel went out of commission in 1855, at the Portsmouth navy yard, New Hampshire. Later, at times, she was used as a training ship. She was partially re- fitted in 1877, and in 1878, she crossed the ocean the last time in order to attend the Paris Exposition. The Constitution is now at the navy yard, Boston, where she has been since 1897, in which year she was towed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to be present at her cen- tennial celebration. Later it was proposed by someone to use the old ship as a target at sea and sink her in that manner. Protests were made by various organizations and a monster petition was sent from Massachu- setts asking for her preservation. Congress appropriated $100,000 for the purpose, and the old vessel was restored to the same ap- pearance as she presented in 1812, — masts, spars, furniture, etc. The guns are of wood, IIS LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS but exact models of those actually used in 1812. There was much talk of taking her to Jamestown as the centre of the great naval exhibit. On account of the decayed state of her hull it was concluded unsafe to take her to sea. There are various avenues of approach to an adequate preparation. The subject may be fittingly introduced by pictures and talks about that part of our great navy which is at present circumnavigating the globe. The magnificent spectacle of the naval exhibit at Jamestown is still fresh in story and illus- tration and may be utilized to advantage. The unbounded sentiment for a ship has in recent years been demonstrated in the case of the Oregon in her wonderful voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic and her participa- tion in the destruction of the Spanish fleet off Santiago. The triumphal procession of Admiral Dewey through some of the Ameri- can cities after his return from Manila will give some idea of the tremendous enthusiasm of which an adoring people is capable. A study in contrast between the Constitution A MODEL LESSON 119 and the Monitor in appearance, construc- tion, locomotion, style of fighting, and results of victory, ought to be helpful and interesting. These are only suggestions of what may be done. Something like this must be done if the poem is to be really studied and appre- ciated. 2. The Presentation. Word-study should precede everything else. It is utter nonsense to talk about the appreciation of literature without an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of words. The mind cannot seize upon figures of speech unless it knows the ideas upon which these figures are based. A knowledge of the root idea of a word is often essential to an exact understanding of its use. Words usually connote many things, and no matter how excellent the dictionaries may be, a teacher is in most cases a necessary supple- ment. The significance of a word in a group is often very different from its literal mean- ing. The habit of acquiring a clear and ade- quate conception of the language of every- thing read should be thoroughly established. Do not be afraid of etymologies. To L20 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS know a large number of Latin and Anglo- Saxon words with their meanings is not ped- antry, though one does not read those lan- guages. In many cases the exact idea does not appear until the attention is fixed on the primitive meaning of key words. Under such a study the word ensign ceases to be a mere standard but becomes an emblem with something specially marked upon it. There persists the Latin idea of in + signum which is scarcely modified by the French medium through which it passes. Likewise the word meteor is enriched in meaning and illu- minates the line in which it is used when we understand that in the original Greek it means raised above the earth, soaring in the air. So, too, of the word harpy, which sig- nifies literally spoiler or snatcher. A study of imagery should follow the w r ord-study. The imagination should re- create the concrete ideas of the author. The vivid pictures should pass like a panorama; "the tattered ensign" — the dancing eyes of the sailors — "the meteor of the ocean air" — the ship sweeping the clouds — the winds A MODEL LESSON 121 "hurrying o'er the flood" — the white waves — "the harpies of the shore" — and the final superb picture of the gallant frigate, her "holy flag" nailed to the mast, her threadbare sails bellying in the wind, set adrift, a prey to the pitiless waves, the light- ning, and the gale. The constructive faculty of the imagina- tion is brought into play continually by creating new wholes out of the store of experi- ences the child already has. f The associative imagination is finely illustrated in the com- parison of the swift frigate to a meteor, and to an eagle, and the men, who should dis- mantle her, to harpies. There is hardly any poem of equal length that so exercises the imagination, and throughout it all there is a subtle personification which makes us image the great ship as a semi-sentient thing. The emotional element is characterized by vividness rather than by variety. The first stanza makes an appeal to pride, — pride in the achievement of a great ship. The second stanza induces in us a feeling of pity for her in her degradation and a sense of the ingrati- 122 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS tude of a nation that would allow the "eagle" to be plucked by the "harpies." The third stanza is an appeal to poetic jus- tice, — a demand that the old ship be given a last chance, — that her end shall be in keeping with her career, — that in fierce conflict with sea and storm, with her flag nailed to the mast, she should go down. Like a Viking she had sailed the seas and like a Viking she should die. These are the kinds of emotion that touch human conduct and are, therefore, of the highest rank. The little poem stands all the tests for the emotions. In presenting it to a class care must be taken that these emotions be actually experienced. Children should be trained to state the feelings which words and pictures excite. The desires aroused should be studied by the teacher and worthy ones should be fostered so that they take the form of an act of the will. Emotions which are allowed to dissipate may become harmful and degenerate into mere sentimentality. There is no better subject for training the will than literature. In the realms of imag- A MODEL LESSON 123 ination and emotion the child is a king or a beggar, as he pleases. He follows his own choices and impulses, transforming them into deeds. In this magic land he not only experiences a wide range of desires but makes an effort to realize them. Under the laws of free choice and exercise, the will grows strong. This is one of the reasons why literature is such a valuable primary study. It is not given mainly as an informa- tion subject. During the earlier years the training of the imagination, the emotion, and the will, is far more important than the training of the intellect. I have said elsewhere that thought is fun- damental. The leading thought should be diligently sought for and expressed in the most concise, beautiful language possible. Every child should make his own statement, but finally the best only should be accepted. The central thought of this poem may be stated as follows : A nation should not allow the degradation of its venerable battleships. Such a statement expresses a generalization and is secured by taking the thoughts ex- 1-24 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS pressed separately in the individual stanzas, and finding the principle around which they are grouped. The form is admirably adapted to the con- tent. The division into stanzas marks off clearly the separate ideas. The short lines give a sense of strength. The iambic meter, being the meter nearest like ordinaiy speech, gives ease of movement. The variation of trochaic measure, especially at the beginning of lines, as in "Nail to the mast her holy flag," gives added strength and rapidity. The rhyme adds richness and is an element of beauty as is the effect of tone-color in the combinations of deep vowels and liquid con- sonants in such expressions as "the cannon's roar" and "the meteor of the ocean." The extra, unaccented syllables in stanza one, lines three and seven, and in stanza two, line three, give a feeling of excitement or haste. They also make for lightness and variety. The diction throughout is marked by exactness and is enhanced by beautiful imagery. The most prominent qualities of the style are force and clearness. A MODEL LESSON 125 r The presentation should culminate in oral reading. The teacher should read it first, as a whole, as impressively as possible, bring- ing out the pictures, the emotions, and the thought. The children should also read the poem as a whole. Of course, there should be drill upon parts of it, but to chop it up into stanzas, giving each to a separate child, with the necessary delays between them, and the variation in the personal element and con- ception, is to go far toward making the reading ineffective. 3. Comparison. The teacher will think of various examples in history with which to compare the ideas of this poem. This study may be more or less extensive as the time and occasion may require. It offers, too, an ex- cellent opportunity for the correlation of his- tory and literature. A comparative study of the Monitor and the Oregon has already been suggested. Shortly before the appear- ance of our poem the Admiralty of England determined to cut the Victory, a one-hundred- gun ship, down to seventy-four guns. The Victory was Lord Nelson's flag-ship at the 126 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS battle of Trafalgar. When the order was published the people raised such an outcry against it that the proposed measure was abandoned. Other studies will suggest themselves to the wide-awake teacher. Chil- dren, if put upon the right track, delight in running down such things. 4. Generalization. This may be stated as the proposition that in the life of a nation noble sentiment is a vital force. 5. Application. It is important that school problems should be seen as life prob- lems. Education is a preparation for living. Good citizenship is the justification of the state in educating its youth. A valid criti- cism against the schools in many cases is that they are not practical. Here is an op- portunity to look into some of the great ques- tions of public polity. Good teaching de- mands it. As far as time will allow, consider the pensioning of soldiers and sailors, their widows and orphans, aged ministers and teachers, the caring for the insane and indi- gent old people. The power of sentiment in private life should be studied in regard to A MODEL LESSON 127 our attitude toward old servants, old, worn- out horses, etc. The field offers great op- portunities to a real teacher. Finally, the children should learn the poem by heart. Recall it from time to time and let it be repeated until it is thoroughly fixed. It may not be possible, nor always desir- able, to go into so much detail as above. The formal steps are not always so clearly de- fined. To use a chemical figure, they are sometimes held in solution and cannot be thoroughly precipitated. Care must be taken in using any method not to make it a "cut-and-dried" affair. Granting that the mind acquires knowledge according to the principles laid down in apperception, some such order of study must, consciously or un- consciously, be followed in order to achieve good results. COURSE OF STUDY A NY such course as the following can be, at best, but tentative. Modifications must necessarily be made. Classes of pupils of the same age vary more or less in different localities and from year to year in the same locality. These variations are not only in intellectual ability but in fineness of temper, in home training, in manners, and in taste. All these things must be taken into consider- ation by the teacher. Things suited to a certain grade class may be too elementary or too advanced for a class in the same grade another year. Then, too, the lines of demarcation be- tween the grades are not hard and fast. In- deed, there may be frequently no practical difference in the ability or the needs of con- tiguous grades. The demarcation between the fourth and fifth grades in such a subject as history or literature may at times be hard COURSE OF STUDY 129 to find. Where the material differs so little in quality, logical order should determine the presentation. The psychological develop- ment of the child is the true basis for classifi- cation of literature as it is for any other sub- ject. Here of course general statements only can be made and general conditions applied. Any scheme must be more or less elastic. It must be adapted, not adopted, in order to be efficient. The following suggested course of study does not pretend to be exhaustive. It aims to provide a methodical, comprehensive, and articulated series of studies for all the grades. The amount of work for each grade is judged to be such that the average teacher may hope to complete it. Additional work is provided in a later chapter. Two objects are constantly kept in mind : First, material that is intrinsically inter- esting and suitable. Second, material that will furnish an equipment for an intelligent and pleasurable reading of the choice literature of the world. All the books recommended in the follow- 9 130 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS ing course have been examined. In many cases cheaper texts may be secured. Some valid reason has caused the selection of the ones named, such as type, workmanship, beauty, etc. The cost of books is thought to be well within the limits of teachers and pupils. A teacher's library indicates the teacher, as his kit of tools does the carpen- ter. Certainly every school should have an adequate and carefully selected library. Even the country teacher, who is in earnest, will find plenty of ways to present literature to his boys and girls. In Grades VI, VII, and VIII, most, if not quite all the work, may be done by placing the inexpensive texts in the hands of the pupils and by de- voting a part of the time usually given to the readers to their mastery. This plan may be followed with advantage to a large ex- tent in the lower grades. Such work not only brings about desirable results from a literary standpoint but it is also the best means of developing good readers. Under the stimulus of real literature, suitable to the age of the children, much of the mere drill COURSE OF STUDY 131 and drudgery of the ordinary reading lesson becomes of living interest and is done with enthusiasm. In every school there should be a recitation hour set apart for literature and it should be kept sacred. At this time the teacher may read, tell stories, or have some of the pupils read or reproduce what has been previously given them. In this work, several grades may be combined to advantage, e. g., Grades I and II, or IV and V, etc. It must not be supposed that the lines between the grades may not often be obliterated. The usual Friday afternoon exercises offer another good opportunity for the teaching and appreciation of literature. Many short masterpieces should be committed to mem- ory. The finest thoughts of the finest mas- ters should be the permanent possession of the children. No child should be allowed to learn by heart anything for school purposes except the choicest things, and every selection should be approved by the teacher. Another valuable exercise, from the stand- point of literature, is to present a long story 132 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS in the form of a serial. The teacher may read a chapter or a division from week to week or, perhaps even better, he may ask various pupils to prepare beforehand a given amount and read it. I know by ex- perience that certain long productions pre- sented in this way are received enthusiasti- cally and are pretty well mastered. Books are for use and no teacher's books are too good to be lent to the children, on proper occasion, to be taken home and read. Parents become interested if the right meth- ods are used and genuine regard manifested. There is no community so lethargic nor so uncultured but that it may be awakened to an interest in literature by a wise teacher. No man is too great a boor to enjoy a good story and no woman is too coarse and ig- norant to appreciate a genuine folk tale. Literature is an open sesame to the affection of parents as well as of children. COURSE OF STUDY 133 GRADE I — FIRST YEAR Note. — The numbers following the topics correspond to the book numbers in the Bibliography on page 197. Mother Goose Melodies. 1. It has been said that literature for the child begins with the crooning lullaby of the mother and is continued by the nonsense rhymes and jingles, such as the "Mother Goose Melodies." These are rightly called "melodies" because they have literally sung themselves from generation to generation into the hearts of children. Mankind has made no mistake in them. They are per- manent literature. It is no matter if they do seem to certain adults mere nonsense. Their versification is uniformly good. It is full of rnythm and music. The child in re- peating them is getting excellent drill in ac- cent and emphasis. Poetical form becomes familiar. They also train the ear, quicken the emotions, and stimulate the imagination. All such melodies have a high aesthetic value 134 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS for the children. Mr. Arlo Bates says they are " The only alma mater with rhymes foolish but rhythmical, meaningless but musical." Let it be frankly admitted that these melo- dies are mere jingle, that they have little or no content. That they are fanciful things is not an argument against them, but is in their favor. The six-year-old child lives largely in that realm. Moreover, they have a wonder- ful charm as mere language. They are closely allied to song, and children give themselves up to the pleasure of sound. The content is so simple that the beauty of phrase and motion is emphasized. They are full of imagery. The rhythm is so striking as not to be missed. The diction is choice and the alliteration effective. Let the teacher make a careful study of "Sing a Song of Six- pence," just to see how rich it is in the qualities mentioned. Mr. Gummere, in his "The Beginnings of Poetry," has a most illuminating discussion on the subject of rhythm. It is a funda- mental element of life and "The essential fact of poetry." Says he, p. 78, "Rhythm COURSE OF STUDY 135 is the prime characteristic, the essential condition, of the dance, and the oldest poetry is by common consent found in close alliance with dance and song." He goes on to show how "exact rhythms spring from primitive song, dance, and labor, mainly under communal conditions, and that exact rhythm lies at the heart of poetry." On p. 91 he says East Africans are reported to " dance in crowds to the rhythm of their own voices, as well as to the drum, moving in cadence with the songs which they sing. . . . When cleaning rice, they work to the rhythm of songs, to foot-stamping and hand-clapping of the bystanders." The inevitable conclu- sion, says he, is that "dance, poetry, and song were once a single and inseparable function." Of the child he says, p. 102, that "he is a sworn foe to defective meter, and boggles at it ; indeed, such defects are hard to find in all the amiable nonsense. The child's ear for rhythm is acute; his execu- tion of it in choral or in verse learned from hearing is precise ; his demands upon it are the strictest." In his "Talks on the Study 136 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS of Literature" Mr. Arlo Bates says, "There are few characteristics more general in the race of man than that responsiveness to rhythm which is the foundation of the love of verse." How significant these statements are ! The range of poetry is as wide and varied as life itself. The "Mother Goose Melo- dies" are the earliest literary material of children. They make their appeal to cer- tain instincts before children can talk. The rhythm in them cannot be missed. They are always fresh. We never outgrow them as we do mere trash. Then too, most children come to school with an interest already in these jingles, which therefore does not need to be awak- ened. This is a logical beginning place. A moment here and there throughout the day may be given them. Such moments will lighten their tasks, quiet tense nerves, and make for good conduct. These little poems also offer exceptional advantages to children in learning to read, because many of them are already known by heart. From the oral COURSE OF STUDY 137 knowledge of word and poem to the knowl- edge of the word and poem of the printed page is an easy and fascinating step. Most of us as teachers need to be cau- tioned about using everything because it happens to be in a book. Judicious selection should become a habit. Some of the choicest of the "Mother Goose Melodies" are: "Jack and Jill." "Hey Diddle Diddle." "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe." "Little Miss Muffett." "Rub-a-dub-dub." "Hickory, Dickory, Dock." "Little Boy Blue." "Little Bo-Peep." "Ding, Dong, Bell." "Sing a Song of Sixpence." "There Was a Man in Our Town." "There Was a Crooked Man." "I Saw an Old Woman." "Pease Porridge Hot." "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son." "Old King Cole." "Simple Simon." 138 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "London Bridge." "Cock Robin." Cumulative Tales. 1. Cumulative tales logically follow the "melodies" as the easiest way of combining a number of incidents. The method is primitive and the result dear to the heart of childhood. Three of the prime favorites are: "The House That Jack Built." * ' Henny-Penny . ' ' "The Old Woman and Her Pig." Proverbs. 1. Proverbs contain some of the finest wis- dom of the race, reduced to the lowest terms of thought and language. Some of the best ones are: "A stitch in time saves nine," "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." "Little strokes fell great oaks." "Constant dropping wears away the stone." "East, west, home is best." COURSE OF STUDY 139 Fables. 1. These have been called "The small coin of thought." They are among the things which the race has elected to remember. The best ones "have been told to children since the world was young." They are short and full of fine imagination. In them, animals are the natural companions of men and talk as they do. They are full of novelty and interest. The object of every fable is a moral. The lesson was seized upon first and the characters chosen to fit it. Some of the most noted ones are: "The Mouse and the Lion." "The Fox and the Grapes." "The Tortoise and the Hare." Nursery Tales. 2. "The Three Bears." "Mother Hubbard and Her Dog." "Dame Wiggins of Lee." "The Three Bears" is one of the stories not to be omitted. While its present form is the work of Robert Southey, its origin is probably an old folk tale. It has all the 140 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "ear-marks" of the old folk stories and is a never-ending delight to children. There are various modernized versions, but care should be taken to secure the original one which is the best. Hiawatha's Childhood (Longfellow). 3. The work for this grade should consist of lines 64 to 143, Part III of "The Song of Hiawatha." They are best grouped into seven short sections, as follows : Lines 64 to 73. Lines 74 to 85. Lines 86 to 97. Lines 98 to 116. Lines 117 to 126. Lines 127 to 135. Lines 136 to 143. The work may be presented best as a series of stories, each section being taken as a unit. Careful preparation for reading the verse should be made by oral work, illustra- tions on the blackboard, pictures, objects, etc. All the new words should be under- stood, and recognized at sight. Each lesson should take the form of an oral story, told by COURSE OF STUDY 141 the teacher and given back by the pupils. The section should then be presented in its original form. Practice in oral reading should follow, and the passage be memorized. There is no finer material than this for the little folk. Classic Myths. 4. There is no book specially arranged for primary grades. Here the teacher must adapt the story. The most primary nature myths should be first selected. The children already have a more or less rudimentary knowledge of mother nature and are trying to fathom her mysteries much as did the grown up children of long ago. "Day and night, the golden glory of the sun and the softer radiance of the moon, the flush of sunrise and the gorgeous grandeur of de- parting day, the glimmering stars shining through the loopholes of the dark, the mys- tery of the changing clouds, the rustling leaves, the powerful winds of winter, the snow, the rain, the flash and crash of storm, all these the children know." It has been 142 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS aptly said "An intense love of nature, an enriched imagination, a strengthened ethical sentiment, may confidently be expected from a study of these ancient world myths." Use in this grade, "Apollo," "Diana," "Aurora," "Daphne," "Clytie," and "The Pleiades." The Bible. Adapt : (a) Daniel in the Lions' Den. A story of great possibilities. (b) The Prodigal Son. A story wonderful in the beauty of simplicity. It touches the deepest emotion of home life, emphasizes the father love, points an effective moral, and shows the working of envy. The back- ground of oriental life makes a vivid setting for the story which is itself full of imagery and action. Suggested for Memorizing. 5. "The Baby " — George Macdonald. "Cock Robin " — Mother Goose. "The Dewdrop" — Frank Dempster Sherman. COURSE OF STUDY 143 "Good-Night and Good-Morning" — Richard Monckton Milnes. "I Saw a Ship A-Sailing" — Mother Goose. "Mary Had a Little Lamb " — Hall. "The Rain is Raining All Around" — Stevenson. "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" — From the German. "Sweet and Low " — Tennyson. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" — Taylor. "The Wind " — Stevenson. "Who Has Seen the Wind " — Rossetti. Proverbs. GRADE II — SECOND YEAR Fables and Folk Stories. 1. (a) Fairy tales that every child ought to know, — the oldest and best in the world: "Little One Eye, Little Two Eyes, and Little Three Eyes." "Little Red Riding Hood." 144 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "Jack and the Bean Stalk." "Puss in Boots." "Tom Thumb." "Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper." "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood." "Beauty and the Beast." "The White Cat." (b) Fables: "The Wind and the Sun." "The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs." "The Lark and Her Young Ones." "The Wolf and the Lamb." Hiawatha's Childhood (Longfellow). 2. The work for this grade should consist of lines 144 to 235, Part III, of "The Song of Hiawatha." They are best grouped into seven short sections, as follows: Lines 144 to 150. Lines 151 to 158. Lines 159 to 172. Lines 173 to 192. Lines 193 to 209. Lines 210 to 222. Lines 223 to 235. COURSE OF STUDY 145 Pursue the same method as in the previ- ous grade. A review of the book as a whole should follow and all the lessons presented consecutively and as a unit. The funda- mental law of unity should not be missed. Classic Myths. 3. Follow the same method as laid down for Grade I. Adapt, "Ceres," "Neptune," "Mercury," "Proserpine," and " ^Eolus." The Bible. Adapt : (a) Noah's Ark. (b) The Appearance of the Shepherds. Suggested for Memorizing. 4. "Bed in Summer" — Stevenson. "A Boy's Song" — James Hogg. , "A Dutch Lullaby" — Eugene Field. "He Did n't Think" — Cary. "The Lamb" — William Blake. "The Land of Story Books " — Steven- son. "Little Gustava" — Celia Thaxter. "My Shadow" — Stevenson. 10 14G LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "The Rock-a-By Lady " — Eugene Field. "Seven Times One" — Jean Ingelow. "What the Birds Say" — Coleridge. "For My Country" — Selected. Proverbs. GRADE III — THIRD YEAR Grimm's Folk Tales. 1. A few only of the choicest of these wonder tales can be utilized in class. While the best results in this grade will be obtained by an oral presentation first and then by reading, the children should be encouraged to take up new things alone. This should be done under the direction and approval of the teacher. Such stories as these are to be read very soon after the child has mastered the mechanics of the art. If he waits until he has finished the school readers he misses much of the pleasure. Some of the finest ones are: "Snow- White and Rose-Red." COURSE OF STUDY 147 "The Hare and the Tortoise." "The Bremen Town Musicians." "The Goose Girl." "Hansel and Grethel." " Rumpelstiltskin." Hans Andersen's Stories. 2. These are genuine literary tales, con- sciously put into artistic form. They provide an easy step from the fables and folk tales. The didactic element is not so prominent. They are more imaginative and the play of humor is often noticeable. They naturally and easily lead out into the more pretentious literature of the higher grades. Study : "The Ugly Duckling." "The Princess on the Pea." "The Pine Tree." "The Beetle." Robinson Crusoe (De Foe). 3. This is the greatest story ever written for boys. It should not be omitted. It furn- ishes a transition from myth and fairy tale to real biography. It is an interesting nar- 148 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS rative and of great educational value in teaching character. "The indestructible vitality of this book must be sought, not alone in the entertainment it affords, but chiefly in its symbolism. There can be no doubt that Robinson's experiences possess a deep, symbolic meaning. His life upon the lonely island is in a certain sense the life of man- kind, which, launched as it were into exist- ence upon earth with but scanty equipment, by the exercise of great ingenuity and at the expense of endless hardships, in the course of history, converts the uncertain conditions to which it awoke upon the dawn of self- consciousness, into one of passable com- fort." — Rein. "There is no child's classic which so brings them into touch with the primitive life of man, nor which so forcibly brings be- fore them man's physical requirements and the steps involved in their attainment. . . . All this will be made doubly real and interest- ing to them, if they are allowed to carry out the drama for themselves. To this end, every suitable means which the teacher can COURSE OF STUDY 149 devise should be used to enable lbs children to enter personally into all the trials and triumphs of De Foe's hero." — Cowles. Classic Myths. 4. Use the same method as in Grades I and II. Present, "Vulcan," "Narcissus," "Prometheus," and "The Deluge." Bible Stories. 5. The stories in the book recommended are taken from the Old Testament and are among the most famous and the most fasci- nating in existence. "It has been the aim of the author to retell these stories from a literary standpoint, and in the same manner as he would retell other stories pertaining to the infancy of the human race. He has endeavored to represent the actors in them as real men and women inhabiting the same world as ourselves ; and, while it has been neither possible nor desirable to omit fre- quent allusions to the supernatural, care has been taken not to trespass on the domain of the religious teacher." The twelve stories are interestingly told, and the style is simple 150 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS and pleasing. They may be studied sepa- rately or as a continuous narrative. The longer stories are carefully divided into units, each of which may be taken as a lesson. For example there are nine little chapters about Joseph, six about Samson, and five about David. These are especially for this grade. They may be adapted easily by the teacher for oral presentation and later read by the children. The book may be used as a reader in Grade IV. Suggested for Memorizing. 6. "The Brown Thrush" — Lucy Larcom. "The Child's World" — Selected. "A Farewell" — Charles Kingsley. " A Farm- Yard Song " — John T. Trowbridge. "If I Were a Sunbeam" — Lucy Larcom. "Marjorie's Almanac" — T. B. Aldrich. "The Miller of Dee" — Mackay. "The Owl" — Tennyson. "The Piper" — William Blake. "The Spider and the Fly" — Mary HOWITT. COURSE OF STUDY 151 "The Violet" — Taylor. "A Visit from St. Nicholas" — Moore. Proverbs and Popular Sayings. GRADE IV — FOURTH YEAR Note — In this and the following grades, texts should, as far as possible, be in the hands of the children, and the study be made from them. Hiawatha (Longfellow). 1. Read the whole poem. Connect the work with that previously done in Grades I and II. If time presses, carry the work over into Grade V. This poem is not to be omitted, since it contains in the most admirable form our finest Indian legends. Kingsley'a Greek Heroes. 2. This is a collection of Greek hero tales about Perseus, the Argonauts, and Theseus. The stories are fifteen in number and are written in a style which preserves well the simplicity and primitive nature of the origi- 152 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS nal tales. In my judgment, the book is better adapted to children than Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," which covers much the same ground. Viking Tales (Hall). 3. This is a fascinating book about kings, battles, and sea rovers. It is also an interest- ing chapter in American history. I Quote from the Suggestion to Teachers: "These Norse stories have, to my think- ing, three values. The men, with the crude courage and the strange adventures that make a man interesting to the children, have at the same time a love of the truth, the hardy endurance, and the faithfulness to plighted word, that make them a child's companions. I should deem it a great thing accomplished if the children who read these stories should be so tempted after awhile to read those fine old books, to enjoy the tales, to appreciate straightforwardness and simplicity of style. The historical value of the story of Leif Ericson and the others seems to me to be not the learning of the fact that Norsemen dis- COURSE OF STUDY 153 covered America before Columbus did, but the gaining of a conception of the conditions of early navigation, of the length of the voy- age, of the dangers of the sea, ... of why the Norsemen did not travel, of what was necessary to be done before men should strike out across the sea." The style and atmosphere of the book are well worthy of the subject. The Arabian Nights. 4. Perhaps these are the most famous stories of their kind in the world. Everyone likes to read them sooner or later. They are pop- ular the world over, and are related still whenever there is a gathering of Arabs or Turks in the tents or in the cities. They are pure narrative, without any moral lessons, and are intended for amusement only. Ed- ward Everett Hale says: "Some of the stories in the ' Arabian Nights ' have become so completely a part of modern literature that ignorance of them would be considered indicative of dulness. To allude to 'Alad- din's Lamp,' to allude to 'Sinbad the Sailor,' 154 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS to allude to the 'Barmecide's Feast/ is to refer to narratives of which it is supposed that persons of tolerable education have some knowledge, just as they are supposed to know what is meant by the words, the ' Discovery of America,' the 'Declaration of Independence,' or the 'Fall of Rome.'" The ones not to be omitted are: "The Story of Aladdin; or The Wonder- ful Lamp." J "The History of Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers." "The Story of Sinbad the Sailor." "The Barmecide Feast." The Pig Brother and Other Fables (Richards). 6. An ideal book of short stories and a few poems. Strong in imagination and emotion. The ethical element is handled incidentally but very effectively. The style is delight- ful. Excellent for Grades IV and V as a supplementary reader. Bible Stories. 6. The book mentioned in the Bibliography contains reproductions of some of the great COURSE OF STUDY 155 religious pictures. Read especially the stories adapted from the New Testament and such from the Old Testament as have not been utilized in the previous grades. The stories are charmingly told. Suggested for Memorizing. 7. "The Barefoot Boy" — Whittier. "The Children's Hour" — Longfellow. "The Daffodils" — Wordsworth. "The Fairy Song" — Shakespeare. "The Fountain" — Lowell. "Jack Frost" — Gould. "The Mountain and the Squirrel" — Emerson. "Rain in Summer" — Longfellow. "The Sea" — Adelaide Proctor. "September" — Helen Hunt Jackson. "He Prayeth Well " — Coleridge. "The Old Oaken Bucket " — Samuel Wood worth. Proverbs and Popular Sayings. 156 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS GRADE V— FIFTH YEAR Tales of Troy (De Garmo). 1. These stories are from Homer's Iliad, one of the few world-books. They form a com- plete narrative. The material is intrinsically interesting and admirably suited to the heroic age of childhood, the age about eleven or twelve. The style is clear and strong. For one to say that he is ignorant of this Greek epic is almost as condemning as to say that he is ignorant of Shakespeare or the Bible. The King of the Golden River (Ruskin). 2. One of the most beautiful of the literary fairy tales. The style is superb. The moral lesson of unselfishness is most illuminating. The story is a delight to older people as well as to children and offers a fine introduction to one of our most charming writers. It is not to be omitted. Norse Stories (Mabie). 3. Ruder than the classic stories, — not such fine finish. They carry with them the very COURSE OF STUDY 157 breath of the Viking age, — full of vigorous action, heroic adventure, and charming imagination. These are the beginnings of Teutonic literature, of which English is a branch. The style is finished. The stories may be read to the pupils or by them individ- ually. They may be told with profit to the pupils as low down as the third grade. The book is well adapted to library or home use. Arthurian Legends. 4. The beauty of these legends is not sur- passed. Next to Christianity, chivalry has been the greatest influence in the develop- ment of worthy manhood. "The practices of chivalry were designed to cultivate in men that courage and gentleness and high sense of honor essential in all ages, to ideal char- acter. . . . The institution of chivalry is dead ; but its spirit is immortal, and makes its home in whatever heart is great and gen- erous enough to harbor it." The legends are told in simple, well-written prose. Gulliver's Travels (Swift). 5. One of the greatest stories and satires in 158 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS the world. Study it as a story. The mean- ing and moral are so clear that for most children there is no need to point them out. "The book combines in a measure the inter- ests of 'Robinson Crusoe' and that of the fairy tale; its style is objective; the narra- tive and the matter appeal strongly to the childish imagination. For more mature boys and girls, and for adults, the interest is found chiefly in the keen satire which underlies the narrative. It appeals, therefore, to a very wide range of intelligence and taste, and can be read with profit by the child of ten and by the young man or woman of mature years." Bible Stories in Scripture Language. 6. Dealing with stories that by this time should be known to the child, the volume recommended introduces him to the noblest of English prose, the King James Version of the Bible. There is scarcely anything more desirable than an intimate knowledge, appreciation, and love of this language. It is pretty clearly demonstrated that these COURSE OF STUDY 159 things cannot be trusted to the home and to the Sunday School. Suggested for Memorizing. 7. "Aladdin" — Lowell. "The Arrow and the Song" — Long- fellow. "Barbara Frietchie" — Whittier. "The Day is Done" — Longfellow. "How Sleep the Brave" — Collins. "The Landing of the Pilgrims" — He- mans. "The Planting of the Apple Tree" — Bryant. "Stay, Stay at Home, My Heart"— Longfellow. "The Three Fishers" — Kingsley. "To a Fringed Gentian" — Bryant. "Under the Greenwood Tree" — Shake- speare. "The World Wants Men" — Anonymous. "You Are Old, Father William" — SOUTHEY. Proverbs and Popular Sayings. 100 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS GRADE VI — SIXTH YEAR The Adventures of Ulysses (Lamb). 1. These should follow "The Tales of Troy." Together they make a complete story of the fall of Troy and the return of Ulysses. The editor says in the introduction: "It brings the child in contact with the Odyssey, — that fountain head of romance, perhaps the most fascinating single book in the world, and also with Lamb himself, one of the most charming of all English prose writers. Its perusal will almost of necessity induce a de- sire for further acquaintance with Homer.'* The style is exquisite. Most of the material is that which every reader must know about. Ulysses himself is one of the child's favorite heroes. He is a good fighter, active and strong. He is ready at every emergency, — full of wiles and expedients. His most noted trait of character, deception, endears him to children. It is a savage trait, and, in a sense, children are little savages. A study of Ulysses should lead them to see that even COURSE OF STUDY 161 the greatest character may have some defects. Snowbound (Whittier). 2. Not to be omitted. It is the most charming idyl in American poetry, — a picture of the homely New England country life of half a century ago. It appeals to the deep domes- tic relations and is full of beautiful descrip- tions and high thoughts about life, death, and eternity. It is a noble poem of life and some of its finest portions should be memo- rized. It is a great favorite with children. The edition mentioned in the Bibliog- raphy also contains Whittier's " Songs of Labor," in which labor is dignified and beautified. The material is excellent and well suited to this grade. The Courtship of Miles Standish (Longfellow). 3. A fine picture of Puritan life. Interesting from start to finish. Full of delightful char- acters. The poem should be read in the class and attention called to the verse form. It is excellent in many ways for class work. n 162 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Adventures of Robin Hood. 4. Some of our most humorous and enter- taining stories. Mr. Pyle's book introduces us to one of the greatest of all popular heroes and his band. It ought to awaken a desire to read the fine old ballads from which the stories are taken. "For honest purposes manfully followed, and hard knocks cour- ageously endured, must always interest the wholesome boy; while nature is so closely allied to man in the golden days of his green youth that tales of the Greenwood, where the leaves rustle and the birds sing, and all the air is full of the sweet savors of growing things, must ever have a potent charm for the fresh imagination of childhood. . . . The adventures of Robin Hood, sung in song and ballad, have entertained the Anglo- Saxon hearers from the time that English first began to form itself into a language, and I find they charm the young readers of to- day as they delighted the young hearers of five hundred years and more ago." — Preface. The references in our literature to these COURSE OF STUDY 163 tales are legion. They are among the things not to be omitted. Selections from Irving's Sketch Book. 5. A good introduction to the man whom Thackeray styles "The first ambassador sent by the New World of letters to the Old," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" are classics and no one has a right to rob children of their fun and humor. In the latter, "The dreamy beauty of the Catskills, a poetic old legend, the quaint- ness of Dutch life, and the bustle of small politics under a republic are all combined and harmonized with wonderful skill ; and there is no finer character sketch in our liter- ature than the lovable old vagabond, Rip, as he goes slouching through the village, his arms full of children, a troop of dogs at his heels, and the shrill, pursuing voice of Dame Winkle dying away in the distance. " — Bronson. Irving's personality is full of charm, un- affected, and mirrors a mind which took de- light in things beautiful and noble. One of 164 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS the greatest values of literature is an intimate association with such personalities. Tales of the White Hills (Hawthorne). 6. "The Great Stone Face," one of the stories in this volume, has not its superior for children, in English. Its lesson is the unmatched power of an ideal in the build- ing of character. The other stories are ad- mirable, especially "The Great Carbuncle." Hawthorne's style is noteworthy. Hellenic Tales (Carpenter). 7. Adaptations in simple, lucid style of some of the most famous stories of Greek mythol- ogy. A knowledge of this material is indis- pensable to an intelligent reading of much English literature. Suggested for Memorizing. 8. " Abou Ben Adhem " — Hunt. "Cleon and I " — Mackay. "The Destruction of Sennacherib " — Byron. "Hats Off ! The Flag is Passing by " — Bennett. "The Last Leaf " — Holmes. COURSE OF STUDY 165 "My Native Land " — Scott. "Old Ironsides " — Holmes. "The Owl " — Shakespeare. "The Shell " — Tennyson. "The Skylark " — Hogg. "The Snowstorm " — Emerson. "To a Skylark " — Wordsworth. Proverbs and Popular Sayings. GRADE VII — SEVENTH YEAR Evangeline (Longfellow). 1. This poem is one of our classics. Pro- fessor Bronson says, "In 'Evangeline' he worked upon a story of singular beauty and pathos, and had a heroine whose pure and gentle nature he was peculiarly fitted to portray. In truth, Evangeline seems less an individual character than an ideal abstrac- tion, the embodimemt of a woman's death- less love. The setting is vitally related to the central figure. ... In Part Second the descriptions contrast Evangeline's solitude with the regained happiness of her friends, 1GG LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS and help the reader to realize the vastness and the wildness of the west and the conse- quent heroism, yet hopelessness of the search. The final meeting of the aged lovers ... is a picture ... of spiritual love im- mortal amidst the body's decay. The meter of the poem has provoked much discussion. What is certain is that English hexameters can be natural and musical." ' The poem offers exceptional opportuni- ties for class work. Tales from Shakespeare (Lamb). 2. These tales provide an excellent intro- duction to the prince of poets. Shake- speare's plays are not always easy to read or understand. Much of the language is very different from our own and must be studied. In these tales the language is as nearly that of Shakespeare's day as it was possible to make it. Diligent care was taken " to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote ; therefore, words introduced into our 1 A History of American Literature, p. 185. COURSE OF STUDY 167 language since his time have been as far as possible avoided." All of us talk fluently about Shakespeare and few of us read him, — chiefly because we can't. We should have been taught something of his delight and worth in the grammar school instead of a great quantity of the dry husks in the fourth and fifth readers. Such wilful neglect is little less than a crime. "These tales make real the life of the Elizabethan age. The people talk and move and the dramatist is a real man. They are a beautiful portico through which young people, and many old ones, can approach the master's mind and work with ease, and with delight." Without doubt they are what the authors hoped they might be, " enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a with- drawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, be- nignity, generosity, humanity; for of ex- amples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full." 168 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS It is perhaps not possible nor even de- sirable to read all these tales in class. The following at least should be studied : "A Midsummer Night's Dream." "Twelfth Night." "Macbeth." "The Merchant of Venice." "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." "Romeo and Juliet." Don Quixote (Cervantes). 3. This is a book children should be encour- aged to read. It is one of the few world- books, incomparable in humor and satire. There is perhaps no greater work in prose fiction. The characters of the hero and his inimitable squire, Sancho Panza, are im- mortal. The book is intensely humorous and surpassingly human. There is nothing more exquisite than Sancho governing his island. Sella and Thanatopsis (Bryant). 4. In "Sella," Bryant is at his best for light- ness. It is full of fancy and the supernatural. The story is beautiful and well conceived. COURSE OF STUDY 169 There is no finer one to awaken the imagina- tion and stir the proper emotions of children. Each child will probably discover a meaning of his own for the poem, and all may be right. Emphasize the most prominent one. The verse is pure, simple, and highly polished. " Thanatopsis " is the most noted of Bry- ant's poems. It begins with a contempla- tion of nature, — elemental nature, grand and calm ; nature in her visible forms and variable moods ; sympathizing with man in his joyousness, speaking to him with elo- quence intranslatable ; his unfailing com- fort in the hours of darkness and death. The last thought suggests the inevitableness of death. The most powerful element in the poet's nature comes to the front. Attracted by the subject of death, the earth becomes but a mighty sepulcher. The poem has in it something of the august and is full of stately grace and calm, ennobling thought. The verse is deep and sonorous, accurate and finished, and rolls on like a mighty river, somber, but full of rich-colored shadows. LITERATURE IN TIIE COMMON" BCHC l£ :-.--.: I 5. A good introduction to the great author. It is excellent as literature, varied in style, and very interesting. It is full of fanciful humor and the mvsterv and weirdness of ghosts. The character study is charming and shows the genuine, hearty love of the author for the poor and unfortunate. It contains hints as to what may be done with riches and points out the true significance of Christmas. This is a noble epic poem, filled with the glamor of the East, and fascinating in its theme. It is full of heroic action, deep pathos, and chivalric characters. It is worth anv child's time and effort to become acquainted with Matthew Arnold, a master of style and thought. The style is highly lie, clear, flowing and classic. rnortaing. 7. "All the World's a Stage " — SHAKE- RE. ; : Bann ockbum " — Burns. cottt.st ;r stttdt 171 "The Bells " — F "The Bog S _ " — Tex! - "The Cha:_ I the I ight Brigade w — Tennyson. "Good Name in Man or Woman'* — Shaexspeare. "The Humble Bee " — Rwn» Captain ! My Caj lain *' — Whit '"The Rainy Day " — Loxgfeul "There Was a Sound I B " — Byron. "To a Moose " — Burns. "What Constitutes a State " — J:\ - "Winter "' — I.; well. "The Year 'sat the Spring" — B GRADE Mil — EIGHTH YEAR Tie V:s::r ::' S.r Ir-ir.:';: 1. This is one of the best poems in A literature for class ;oially fine bits stud The narrative parts eal with that famous ro- mantic theme, the search for the holv grail. 172 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The sunny nature of Lowell reflects itself in his nature poems, which, as a whole, are the finest in American poetry. Lincoln's Addresses. 2. The Gettysburg Speech is perhaps the most famous one ever delivered by an Amer- ican. In sublimity of thought and style it is peerless. Every boy and girl should be re- quired to commit it to memory. The second inaugural address is but little less famous and should be thoroughly studied. In connec- tion with these Walt Whitman's " O Captain ! My Captain ! " should be learned by heart. The Lady of the Lake (Scott). 3. This is the best of the "Wizard's" poems. It is almost an epic. The witchery of the Scottish Highlands, the beautiful Loch Katrine, the wild Trossachs, the outlawed Chief, the savage Roderick Dhu, the ro- mantic FitzJames, and the fair Ellen, take possession of the reader. The story is rife with love, battles, and adventure. The brilliant description and racy, powerful verse are stimulating. Scott is a prince of roman- COURSE OF STUDY 173 tic imagination and this story never fails to charm. It is a great picture of a great age. The Man Without a Country (Hale). 4. An impressive story and a profound study of patriotism. To have written this only is sufficient to have made the author famous. Wherever the old flag flies, boys and girls ought to have the privilege of reading it. To teach this story is to teach patriotism. Not to be omitted. Ivanhoe (Scott). 5. The best of Scott's novels for school work. Almost as famous, and for many boys quite as fascinating, as "Robinson Crusoe." A great portrait of life in the time of chivalry, the effects of the book should be most ennobling. The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare). 6. This is the best adapted of Shakespeare's plays for children in this grade. Its lan- guage, motives, and incidents are, in the main, entireiy within their comprehension. Children should not be allowed to leave the grammar school without having read at least 174 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS one play of the master of all dramatic writers. Webster's Orations. 7. Boys and girls of the last year in the grammar school should be more or less familiar with one or two of the best orations of the Defender of the Constitution, at least with his reply to Hayne. This is oratorical literature of the highest type. The work is not too difficult for good seventh-grade pupils. Suggested for Memorizing. 8. "Address at the Dedication of Gettys- burg Cemetery" — Lincoln. "The Chambered Nautilus" — Holmes. "Columbus" — Miller. "Concord Hymn " — Emerson. "From 'Snowbound'" — Whittier. "Lead, Kindly Light " — Newman. "On His Blindness " — Milton. "Polonius' Advice to His Son Laertes " — Shakespeare. "The Quality of Mercy " — Shake- speare. COURSE OF STUDY 175 ^"Recessional " — Kipling. "The Rhodora " — Emerson. "She was a Phantom of Delight" — Wordsworth. "The Song of the Brook " — Tennyson. "What is so Rare as a Day in June " — Lowell. EXTENDED LIST FOR SUBSTITU- TION, LEISURE HOURS, AND HOME READING V\7TIERE the mass of material is so great and of such excellent quality, there may well be a difference of opinion as to just the best book to be used. In addition to this reason, local conditions may make it desir- able to substitute other matter for some of that laid down in the Course of Study. Read- ing at home and during leisure hours should become a habit, formed under an intelligent direction as to what is excellent. GRADES I AND II Eugene Field's Poems. 1. The author is a great children's poet. The stories which these poems tell are fraught with interest in the real world LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 177 around and in the shadowy world of fancy. Robert Louis Stevenson's Poems. 2. Stevenson is noted alike for his fine art and deep insight into child nature. The Adventures of a Brownie. 3. A most fascinating story about these little people who are always prime favorites with children. The book is delightful in style, and ethically sound. It is not a folk tale but is literary in conception and composition. Mother Goose Tales. 4. All of them old and very cleverly told. Perhaps the best of the fairy tales, — "Cin- derella," "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Little Thumb," "Puss in Boots," "Riquet of the Tuft," "Blue Beard," "The Fairy," and "Little Red Riding Hood." The Old World Wonder Stories. 5. These tales are more crude and vigorous than the "Tales of Mother Goose." They make a strong appeal to the interests of children. The list is composed of "Whit- 12 178 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS tington and His Cat," "Jack the Giant Killer," "Jack and the Bean Stalk," and "Tom Thumb." Nature Myths. 6. The subject matter is culled from the folk lore of primitive races. I,t makes an appeal to the child's wonder about nature and gives the explanations made by the race in its childhood stage. The material is in- trinsically good, and the child's desire for complete stories is gratified. JEsop's Fables. 7. Probably no book, except the Bible, has been translated into so many languages. These quaint tales of the lower animals are told "simply, directly, and sagely, with a charm and freshness that brings them down to us through the centuries, not growing musty with age, but constantly taking on the vigor of youth." The brevity of these stories makes them admirably adapted to oral presentation, and they are so numerous that they furnish ample material for the third and fourth grades also. The moral is LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 179 usually so plain that it cannot be missed, and children should discover it for themselves. Classic Myths. 8. For clearness and simplicity of language there is no book that excels this. The myths are selected from the Greek, Norse, Roman, and Russian. Boy Blue and His Friends (Blaisdell). 9. "The stories are written around some of the Mother Goose rhymes because the children love to meet old friends in books just as well as we do. Here they will learn why Mary's lamb went to school, what the mouse was looking for when he ran up the clock, why one little pig went to market, how one little pig got lost, and the answer to a great many other puzzling questions." A Child's Garden of Verses (Stevenson). 10. An excellent selection from the famous poems. Select Poems (Three Years With the Poets). 11. An admirable book of poems for reading and memorizing. Work is laid out for the first three years of school. For each year 180 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS there are three lists, — required poems, elective poems, and supplementary poems. Japanese Fairy Tales. 12. A collection of charming wonder tales, delightfully told. Merry Animal Tales (Bigham). 13. A spirited retelling of fables based on the famous French collection by La Fontaine. Excellent for oral presentation, and for supplementary reading in Grade III. GRADES III AND IV The Wonderful Chair Stories (Browne). 1. Ten most fascinating stories. "They are, though set in an atmosphere of the wonder- ful, full of happenings which are always real and possible; the characters are concrete and natural, and the incidents are related in a most pleasing style." The Eugene Field Book (Bttrt-Cable). 2. No one ever got nearer the heart of chil- dren nor understood them better. The best LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 181 quality of his verses sang itself from his heart. Seven Little Sisters (Andrews). 3. There is nothing better of its kind. It widens the child's knowledge and sympathy by other child life. The familiar is en- hanced by the strange. Simply and beauti- fully told in clear, vigorous language. The Story of Ulysses (Cook). 4. A good adaptation of the famous tale. The stories are well selected and give a clear idea of the customs and home affairs of that interesting people. Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know (Mabie). 5. Twenty-four of the most famous fairy tales attractively told. Hawthorne's Wonder Book. 6. A book of standard excellence in Haw- thorne's delightful style. Six of the finest old Greek myths put into an interesting setting. Lolami, The Little Cliff Dweller (Baylisb). 7. A story dealing with the child life of this 182 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS primitive people. The material is intrinsi- cally valuable and very interesting. It is a piece of genuine literature, strong in imagi- nation and emotion, and throbbing with life. Lolami in Tusayan (Bayliss). 8. A companion to the above, dealing with the youth and early manhood of Lolami. It contains, among other chapters, The Luck Shrine, The Snake Dance, On the War-Path, Marriage and Home-Making. Jackanapes (Ewing). 9. A good, healthy story and a lesson in true patriotism. The constant reference to the old gray goose and what she thought about things is very pleasing to children. The book has a fine touch of genuine pathos and holds an incontestable place in child literature. Jan of the Windmill (Ewing). 10. An excellent picture of the north country English life of the middle class. A tale full of beauty and pathos concerning a deserted son, a child of genius. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 183 The Little Lame Prince (Mulock). 11. A first-class literary fairy tale in Miss Mulock's usual happy style. Through the Looking GlasB (Carroll). 12. A noted book of fancy by the author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." It has in it the widely-known verses on "The Jabberwock" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter." A Dog of Flanders ("Ouida"). 13. A classic dog story, pathetic and beautiful, portraying the love and intelligence of the animal. It is likewise an inspiring lesson on the power of an ideal. Krag and Johnny Bear (Thompson-Seton). 14. Fine as literature, fascinating as animal stories. Not to be omitted. "Lobo, Rag, and Vixen" is the title of a book equally captivating. The Howells Story Book. 16. A choice book. "Christmas Every Day" is one of the best Christmas stories ever written. Part II of this book is specially adapted for boys. It deals with customs, 184 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS games, circuses, etc. The style is a happy, every-day, colloquial one. Norse Heroes. 16. A good, simple, clear statement of the Norse myths. Excellent for supplementary and sight reading. Poems of American Patriotism. 17. An almost indispensable book. The best collection of the kind made. Select poems in connection with history topics, special days, etc. Excellent for memorizing and for readings. Diddie, Dumps, and Tot (Ptrnelle). 18. A story of plantation life in Mississippi before the war. It is rife with old stories, legends, traditions, games, hymns, and su- perstitions of the Southern slaves. It was written "to tell of the pleasant and happy relations that existed between master and slave," and gives the sunny side of the picture. An exceedingly interesting and instructive book, and crowded with humor. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 185 Uncle Remus (Haekis). 19. Negro myths and legends of the old plantation. Genuine folk tales, well adapted for oral presentation in Grades I to IV, inclusive. The Labors of Hercules. 20. The twelve labors of Hercules, briefly and well told. The book contains much about other famous Greek heroes. The Golden-Breasted Kootoo (Richards). 21. This is one of the most delightful non- sense stories ever told, and is genuine litera- ture. The edition recommended contains also the stories of "Hokey Pokey" and "The Traveller, The Cook, and The Little Old Man," written in the same humorous vein. GRADES V AND VI The Arabian Nights. 1. Entirely different from the Houghton, Mifflin Company collection. These talcs 180 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS are not so well known but are almost equally interesting. The Rose and the Ring (Thackeray). 2. A fairy tale in the fine style of Thackeray. A good introduction to this great literary figure. Excellent for library and home reading. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll). 3. Lewis Carroll's most famous story. One of the great imaginary tales of the English language. Arthurian Legends. 4. Prose tales based on Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" and Tennyson's "Idyls of the King." The aim of the book is to give chil- dren an interest in the literature dealing with the great Celtic legend of King Arthur, and to arouse their admiration for the sturdy national virtues of which the English race has always been proud. The Hoosier School-Boy (Eggleston). 5. An excellent book. Exciting from start to finish. Full of games, customs, etc., of LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 187 the Middle West. A fine picture of school- boy life. The Idyls of the King (Tennyson). 6. Read in class "The Coming of Arthur" and "The Passing of Arthur." Rab and His Friends (Brown). 7. A classic dog story. Full of human interest. The Story of Siegfried (Baldwin). 8. A captivating story about the greatest of Northern heroes. Something eveiy boy ought to read. The Story of Roland (Baldwin). 9. A companion book to "The Story of Siegfried " and just as fascinating. Roland is the great romantic hero of southern Europe. The Story of the Iliad (Church). 10. A most felicitous retelling of the great story. The Story of the Odyssey (Church). 11. A companion book to "The Story of the Iliad." Both ought to be read by all boys and girls. 188 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS The Birds' Christmas Carol (Wiggin). 12. A superb story of unselfishness and brimming over with humor. The style is exquisite. Selections from Burroughs, Warner, andThoreau. 13. There is no more valuable book than this. Each author is a master in his field. For Grade VI or VII. A Book of Famous Verse (Repplier). 14. One of the choicest collections ever made. The Boy's Life of Christ (Forbush). 15. The story is full of vividness and move- ment, emphasizing the boy life and human greatness of Jesus. It is intensely real, manly, and heroic. Reynard the Fox (Jacobs). 16. Among animal stories, this is next to vEsop's fables in popularity. Admirable for reading purposes and rich in material for oral presentation in the lower grades. The Race of the Swift (Litset). 17. "Stories of wild animals that for interest, truth, and tragic possibilities have not been surpassed." LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 189 Little Women (Alcott). 18. One of the choicest stories ever written for girls. The material is drawn largely from the girlhood life of the author and her sisters. Rolf and the Viking's Bow (French). 19. "No better pictures of a law-abiding, rural, and yet valiant race have ever been made than in the tales which the Icelanders had the skill to weave about their heroes. . . . They tell of real men and women in real circumstances, and show them human in spite of the legends which have grown up about them." In this book, personal cour- age, the prominence of law, and the condi- tions of life at home and abroad are vividly portrayed. A fascinating book and one that should not be omitted. GRADES VII AND VIII Robinson Crusoe (De Foe). 1. Edward Everett Hale says, "A person who is thoroughly and well acquainted with 190 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 'Robinson Crusoe' is thoroughly and well acquainted with the best narrative which has ever been written in the English language." l 5 J The Gold Bug (Poe). 2. The finest of all detective stories for boys and girls. Emerson's Poems. 3. A choice selection. Admirable for class work. Scott's Marmion. 4. A stirring historical poem of a chivalric age. It is well adapted for class work. Spyri's Heidi. 6. A bewitching story of a little Swiss girl's city and country life. Equally good for boys and girls. Two Years Before the Mast (Dana). 6. One of the finest books for boys. A true story of sea-faring life rounding Cape Horn. Intensely exciting. Hans Brinker (Dodge). 7. An entertaining story of Dutch child life. Many of the descriptions of customs are LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 191 drawn directly from life, and the wonderful experiences of Raff Brinker are said to be founded strictly on fact. It is a worthy story of Holland, — "full of oddity, cour- age, and industry, — the pluckiest little country on earth." The Alhambra (Irving). 8. A good collection of the wonder tales of "Old Spain." Tom Brown's School Days (Hughes). 9. A stirring narrative of an English boy's life at Rugby under its master teacher, Thomas Arnold. The Cable Story Book. 10. A book full of imagination, heroism, nobility, love, trust in God, and informa- tion about New Orleans in its most pictur- esque period. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 11. The best results are to be obtained by using the book as a text for class work. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe). 12. "The life of this American slave, as writ- ten by Mrs. Stowe, probably did more than 192 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS any other book, except the Bible, to break down the system of slavery." — Hale. Animal Stories (Roberts). 13. "The Lord of the Air," the eagle; "The King of the Mamozekel," the moose; "The Watchers of the Campfire," the panther; "The Haunter of the Pine Gloom," the lynx ; "The Return to the Trails," the bear; "The Little People of the Sycamore," the raccoon. Mr. Roberts is a close, accurate observer, and a brilliant writer. Myths of Northern Lands (Guerber). 14. A most excellent book for reference. Desirable for school and home libraries. The Apocrypha. 15. Some of the most famous stories of the race. References to them in literature are almost numberless. The Jungle Book (Kipling). 16. Incomparable tales of the Indian jungle. Bob, Son of Battle (Ollivant). 17. A story of a Scotch collie, — the greatest of all the dog stories. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 193 Jock of the Bushveldt (Fitzpatrick). 18. A real story of a bull-terrier in Africa, "the story of a dog cast in heroic mould, who deserves to live with Mr. Ollivant's 'OwdBob.'" The Call of the Wild (London). 19. The masterful story of the magic North and a great St. Bernard dog that goes back to the life of his far-away ancestors. Treasure Island (Stevenson). 20. A brilliant story of pirates, sea life, and adventure. The Last of The Mohicans (Cooper). 21. The best introduction to Cooper's famous stories. A thrilling narrative of pioneer and Indian life. Franklin's Autobiography. 22. A book that every American boy and girl ought to read. Stories of Wagner Operas (Wheelock). 23. A retelling of these famous tales in a bright, racy style. The invention is well managed. The stories are: "The Master 13 194 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Singers," "The Flying Dutchman," "Lo- hengrin," "The Rhinegold," "The Wal- kyries," "Siegfried," and "The Dusk of the Gods." A Book of Heroic Ballads (Tileston). 24. A choice collection of eighteen of the finest literary ballads. Suitable for supple- mentary work. Heroes of Iceland (French). 25. An adaptation of Dasent's translation of the great Icelandic saga, "The Story of Burnt Njal." A stirring, tragic tale and contains "some of the best fighting in liter- ature." "The lesson to be drawn from its pages, in the gentler as well as in the sterner virtues, and in the belief in the value of man- liness and the ultimate triumph of right, are such as no generation and no nation can afford to pass by." With Spurs of Gold (Greene and Kirk). 26. A book about the heroes of chivalry and their deeds. Some of the most famous are Roland, Oliver, The Cid, Richard Cceur- de-Lion, Chevalier Bayard, and Sir Philip LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 195 Sidney. The characters are accurately drawn by depicting "the fine strong virtues and great deeds that won for these knights the unbounded admiration of their own age." A literary presentation of some of the most important historical and legendary material. FOR ALL THE GRADES Heart of Oak Books. 1. The various books of the series correspond in difficulty to the ordinary school reader of the same grade. The selections are ad- mirable and the series should be in every school library. "The youth who shall be- come acquainted with the contents of these volumes will share in the common stock of the intellectual life of the race to which he belongs ; and he will have opened to him all the vast and noble resources of that life." Lights to Literature. 2. The material is well selected and graded. A good, usable series for class-room work. 196 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Open Sesame. 3. A superior collection of prose and verse in three volumes. Graded as to difficulty and prepared for the purpose of encouraging children to "learn by heart," "to learn things worth learning," and "to learn these things because they like them." Poems by Grades. 4. An abundance of material from standard authors. Carefully graded for each of the eight years. Selections also for the seasons, special occasions, etc. Choice Literature. 5. An excellent series. The material is well graded and consists of a great variety of selections from our best literature. The extracts are choice ones. The Wide Awake Series. 6. Most of the material of the second and third readers is of high literary excellence. The lessons are carefully graded and the drill material well arranged. Superior books for supplementary or regular class work. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 197 The Land of Song. 7. "A collection of some of the best short poems in English, varied in theme and in- terest and carefully graded." Excellent for supplementary reading and memorizing. Child Life. 8. The material is carefully selected with reference to the child's interest and perma- nent value. The grading is accurate and the notes and vocabularies are good. BIBLIOGRAPHY Note — The grade and book numbers correspond to the grade and topic numbers in the Course of Study, page 133. GRADE I 1. "Heart of Oak Books" I (Norton). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 25 cents. "The Children's Hour" (Tileston). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Well selected and illustrated. No fables nor proverbs. 198 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 2. "Six Nursery Classics" (O'Shea). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 20 cents; paper, 10 cents. Contains the original version of "The Three Bears." 3. "The Hiawatha Primer" (Holbrook). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents. Admirably adapted for regular reading classes. Excellent for supplementary work. Beautifully illustrated. 4. "Round the Year in Myth and Song" (Holbrook). American Book Company, cloth, 60 cents. A choice collection of prose and verse. The numer- ous pictures, selected with taste and aptitude, are skillfully reproduced. 5. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). First Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. This belongs to a series of eight volumes. Most excellent. GRADE II 1. "Fables and Folk Stories" (Scudder). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents; paper, 30 cents. So rich in material that a part only can be utilized. 2. "The Hiawatha Primer" (Holbrook). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents. 3. "Round the Year in Myth and Song" (Holbrook). American Book Company, cloth, 60 cents. 4. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Second Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 199 GRADE III 1. "Grimm's German Household Tales." Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents; paper, SO cents. 2. "Hans Andersen's Stories." Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents; paper, 30 cents. 3. "Robinson Crusoe" (McMurry-Husted). Public-School Publishing Company, cloth, 35 cents. A special edition for teachers contains valuable suggestions as to how to teach the story. "Robinson Crusoe Reader" (Cowles). A. Flanagan & Co., cloth, 30 cents. Excellent suggestions in Appendix for teaching the story. 4. "Round the Year in Myth and Song" (Holbrook). American Book Company, cloth, 60 cents. 5. "Old Stories of the East" (Baldwin). American Book Company, cloth, 45 cents. 6. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Third Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. GRADE IV 1. "The Song of Hiawatha" (Longfellow). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 30 cents. 2. "Kingsley's Greek Heroes" (Tetlow). Ginn & Company, cloth, 30 cents. 3. "Viking Tales" (Hall). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 35 cents. Well illustrated. 200 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 4. "Stones from the Arabian Nights." Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cent9. 5. "The Pig Brother and Other Fables and Stories" (Richards). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 40 cents. Artistically printed. A few illustrations. 6. "Bible Stories for Young People" (Dawes). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 60 cents. Provided with reproductions of great religious pictures. 7. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Fourth Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. GRADE V 1. "Tales of Troy" (De Garmo). Public-School Publishing Company, cloth, illustrated, 35 cents. 2. "The King of the Golden River" (Ruskin). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 20 cents; paper, 10 cents. 3. "Norse Stories" (Mabie). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 40 cents. 4. "King Arthur and His Court" (Greene). Ginn & Company, cloth, 50 cents. Contains a dozen well-chosen pictures. 5. "Gulliver's Travels" (Swift). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 30 cents. The voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag only. Illustrated. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 201 6. "Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language." Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. The text is that of the Authorized Version. 7. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Fifth Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. GRADE VI 1. "The Adventures of Ulysses" (Lamb). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 25 cents. Illustrated by pen drawings. With map and pro- nouncing vocabulary. 2. "Snowbound" (Whittier). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. S. "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (Longfellow). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 4. "Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" (Pyle). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. 5. "Six Selections from Irving's Sketch Book " (Spragtje). Ginn & Company, cloth, 25 cents. 6. "Tales of the White Hills" (Hawthorne). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 7. "Hellenic Tales" (Carpenter). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 60 cents. Attractively illustrated. 8. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Sixth Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. 202 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS GRADE VII 1. "Evangeline" (Longfellow). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 2. "Tales From Shakespeare" (Lamb). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 40 cents. 3. "The Child's Don Quixote" (Wimon). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Well adapted for school reading and gives all of the larger story worth while. 4. "Sella, Thanatopsis and Other Stories" (Bryant). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 5. "A Christinas Carol" (Dickens). Charles E. Merrill Company, paper, 12 cents. 6. "Sohrab and Rustum" (Arnold). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 7. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Seventh Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. GRADE VIII 1. "The Vision of Sir Launfal" (Lowell). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 2. "The Gettysburg Speech" (Lincoln). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. Includes Whitman's "O Captain ! My Captain .'" 3. "The Lady of the Lake" (Scott). Ginn & Company, cloth, 35 cents. 4. "The Man Without a Country" (Hale). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 25 cents. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 203 5. "Ivanhoe" (Scott). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 25 cents. 6. "Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice" (Rolfe). American Book Company, cloth, 55 cents. 7. "Daniel Webster for Young Americans" (Richard- son). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Well illustrated. 8. "The Approved Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing" (Hix). Eighth Year. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, cloth, 25 cents. EXTENDED LIST GRADES I AND IT 1. "Eugene Field Reader" (Harris). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 40 cents. May be used as a first reader for regular work. Pedagogically correct. Beautifully illustrated. 2. "Robert Louis Stevenson Reader" (Bryce). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 40 cents. The plan is the same as in the "Eugene Field Reader." Style and illustrations equally beautiful. 3. "The Adventures of a Brownie" (Mulock). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 60 cents. 4 "The Tales of Mother Goose" (Perrault). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 20 cents ; paper, 10 cents. 5. "Old World Wonder Stories" (O'Shea). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 20 cents; paper, 10 cents. 204 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 6. "The Book of Nature Myths" (Holbrook). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, -15 cents. Vocabulary based upon "The Hiawatha Primer." The book may be used as a second reader. 7. "iEsop's Fables" (McSpadden). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 60 cents. 8. "Classic Myths" (Jtjdd). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 35 cents. This may be used as a supplementary reader in Grades II and III. 9. "Boy Blue and His Friends" (Blaisdell). Little, Brown, & Co., school edition, cloth, 40 cents. An easy second-year book. Excellent to follow "Heart of Oak Books" I. 10. "A Child's Garden of Verses" (Stevenson). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Finely illustrated. 11. "Three Years With the Poets" (Hazard). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 50 cents. 12. "Japanese Fairy Tales" (Williston). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 50 cents. A book exquisite in design and execution. Illus- trated in true Japanese style. 13. "Merry Animal Tales" (Bigham). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Fully illustrated. For advanced second-year or early third-year reading. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 205 GRADES III AND IV 1. "The Wonderful Chair and the Tales it Told" (Browne). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 30 cents; paper, 20 cents. 2. "The Eugene Field Book" (Burt-Cable). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 60 cents. 3. "Seven Little Sisters" (Andrews). Ginn & Company, cloth, 50 cents. 4. "The Story of Ulysses" (Cook). Public-School Publishing Company, cloth, 50 cents. 5. "Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know" (Mabie). Doubleday, Page & Co., cloth, 90 cents. The book has a valuable introduction. Excellent for supplementary reading. 6. "A Wonder-Book" (Hawthorne). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents. Material much the same as in "Kingsley's Greek Heroes." 7. "Lolami, The Little Cliff Dweller" (Bayliss). Public-School Publishing Company, cloth, 50 cents. 8. "Lolami in Tusayan" (Bayliss). Public-School Publishing Company, cloth, 50 cents. 9. "Jackanapes" (Ewing). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. 10. "Jan of the Windmill" (Ewing). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. 11. "The Little Lame Prince" (Mulock). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 30 cents; paper, 20 cents. 206 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 12. "Through the Looking Glass" (Carroll). T. Y. dwell & Co., cloth, 50 cents. 13. "A Dog of Flanders" (Ouida). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. Contains "The Niirnberg Stove," a fine story suit- able for Grades IV and V. 14. "Krag and Johnny Bear" (Thompson-Seton). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. "Lobo, Rag, and Vixen," in the same series. 15. "The Howells Story Book." Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. The author's biography is exceptionally good and helpful. 16. "Heroes of Asgard" (Keary). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 50 cents. 17. "Poems of American Patriotism" (Matthews). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. 18. "Diddie, Dumps, and Tot" (Pyrnelle). Harper & Bros., cloth, 40 cents. 19. "Nights with Uncle Remus" (Harris). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, $1.50; paper, 50 cents. 20. "Heracles, the Hero of Thebes" (Burt). Charles Scribner's Son's, cloth, 50 cents. 21. "The Golden-Breasted Kootoo and Other Stories" (Richards). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. GRADES V AND VI 1. "Arabian Nights" (Hale). Ginn & Company, cloth, 45 cents. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 207 2. "The Rose and the Ring" (Thackeray). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 25 cents; paper, 15 cents. 3. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Carroll). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 30 cents. A good, usable school edition. 4. "King Arthur and His Knights " (Radford). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 50 cents. 5. "The Hoosier School Boy" (Eggleston). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. 6. "Tennyson's Idyls of the King." The Macmillan Company, cloth, 25 cents. 7. <"Rab and His Friends" (Brown). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 20 cents; paper, 10 cents. 8. "The Story of Siegfried" (Baldwin). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, $1.50. 9. "The Story of Roland" (Baldwin). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, $1.50. 10. "The Story of the Iliad" (Church). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 50 cents. 11. "The Story of the Odyssey" (Church). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 50 cents. 12. "The Birds' Christmas Carol" (Wiggin). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 50 cents. 13. "Birds and Bees" (Burroughs). "A-Hunting of the Deer and Other Essays" (Warner). "The Succession of Forest Trees and Wild Apples" (Thoreau). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 50 cents. 14. "A Book of Famous Verse" (Repplier). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 75 cents. 208 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 15. "The Boy's Life of Christ" (Forbush). Funk& Wagnalls Company, cloth, $1.25. 16. "Reynard the Fox" (Jacobs). A. L. Burt & Co., cloth, $1.00. 17. "The Race of the Swift" (Litsey). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, $1.25. A few fine illustrations. 18. "Little Women" (Alcott). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth $1.50. "Little Men" and "Jo's Boys" complete the fa- mous series. 19. "The Story of Rolf and the Viking's Bow" (French). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, $1.50. Illustrated. GRADES VII AND VIII 1. "Robinson Crusoe" (De Foe). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth, 60 cents. A reprint of the first edition. 2. "The Gold Bug" (Poe). Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. Contains also "The Purloined Letter." Excel- lent for these grades. 3. "Poems From the Writings of Emerson." Houghton, Mifflin Company, paper, 15 cents. 4. "Marmion" (Scott). The Maemillan Company, cloth, 25 cents. 5. "Heidi" (Sptri). Ginn & Company, cloth, 40 cents. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 209 6. "Two Years Before the Mast" (Dana). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 60 cents. 7. "Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates" (Dodge). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. 8. "The Alhambra" (Irving). Ginn & Company, cloth, 40 cents. 9. "Tom Brown's School Days" (Hughes). Ginn & Company, cloth, 50 cents. 10. "The Cable Story Book." Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, 50 cents. 11. "Shakespeare's Julius Ceesar" (Rolfe). American Book Company, cloth, 55 cents. 12. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Stowe). T. Y. Crowell & Co., cloth, 60 cents. 13. "Animal Stories" (Roberts). L. C. Page & Ce^ cloth, each, 50 cents. 14. "Myths^pf Northern Lands" (Guerber). American Book Company, cloth, $1.50. 15. "The Apocrypha." Oxford University Press, cloth, $1.00. The Revised Version. 16. "The Jungle Book" (Kipling). The Century Company, cloth, $1.50. 17. "Bob, Son of Battle" (Ollivant). Doubleday, Page & Co., cloth, $1.50. 18. "Jock of the Bushveldt" (Fitzpatrick). Longmans, Green & Co., cloth, $1.60. 19. "The Call of the Wild" (London). The Macmillan Company, cloth, $1.50. 14 210 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 20. "Treasure Island" (Stevenson). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth, 40 cents. 21. "The Last of the Mohicans" (Cooper). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 25 cents. 22. "Franklin's Autobiography." Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, 40 cents. 23. "Stories of Wagner Operas Told for Children." (Wheelock). The Bobbs-Merrill Company, cloth, $1.25. 24. "A Book of Heroic Ballads" (Tileston). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, 50 cents. Illustrated. 25. "Heroes of Iceland" (French). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, $1.50. Illustrated and furnished with maps and notes. The preface and introduction are unusually valuable. 26. "With Spurs of Gold" (Greene and Kirk). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth, $1.50. Illustrated. FOR ALL THE GRADES "Heart of Oak Books" (Norton). D. C. Heath & Co., cloth. - Book I (25 cents). — Rhymes, Jingles, and Fables. Book II (35 cents). — Fables and Nursery Tales. Book III (40 cents). — Fairy Tales, Stories, and Poems. Book IV (45 cents). — Fairy Tales and Classic Tales of Adventure. Book V (50 cents). — Masterpieces of Literature. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 211 Book VI (55 cents). — Masterpieces of Literature. Book VII (60 cents). — Masterpieces of Literature. 2. "Lights to Literature" (French- Adams). Rand, McNally & Co., cloth. Book I (25 cents). — A First Reader. — Not Litera- ture. Book II (36 cents). — A Second Reader. — The Prose Matter is Commonplace. Book III (40 cents). — Fables, Myths, Hero Tales, Nature Stories — Good. Book IV (40 cents). — Some of the finest literary material, such as "The Niirnberg Stove." Book V (40 cents). — Prominence given to tales of adventure and chivalry. Book VI (45 cents). — "Adventure, History, Sci- ence, and General Literature." Book VII (50 cents). — Complete masterpieces from British and American authors. Book VIII (60 cents). — Complete selections from the work of thirteen of the greatest British and American writers. 3. "Open Sesame." Ginn & Company, boards, per volume, 50 cents. 4. "Poems by Grades" (Harris-Gilbert). Charles Scribner's Sons, cloth, per volume, 60 cents. Volume I for first four years — Volume II for second four years. 5. "Choice Literature" (Williams). American Book Company, cloth. Book I, Primary (22 cents). — Fables, Fairy Tales, Mother Goose, and Proverbs. 212 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS Book II, Primary (25 cents). — Selected from An- dersen, Grimm, Mulock.etc. ; Many choice poems. Book I, Intermediate (28 cents). — "Aladdin"; Selections from Hawthorne, Whittier, Irving, Tennyson, etc.; Memory gems. 4- Book II, Intermediate (35 cents). — Extracts from Cooper; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; Se- lections from the poets. Book I, Grammar (50 cents). — Extracts from Scott, Dickens, and Irving; Choice selections in prose and poetry. Book II, Grammar (50 cents). — Extracts from Hugo, Longfellow, and Shakespeare; "Julius Caesar" entire; Orations, prose, and poetry. 6. "The Wide Awake Series" (Muhrat). Little, Brown, & Co., cloth. Grade I, The Wide Awake Primer (30 cents). — Drill Material. Grade I, The Wide Awake First Reader (30 cents). — Drill Material. Grade II, The Wide Awake Second Reader (35 cents). — Choicest Literature. • Grade III, The Wide Awake Third Reader (40 cents). — Choice Literature and Stories of For- eign Child Life. Beautifully illustrated. 7. "The Land of Song" (Shote). Silver, Burdett & Co., cloth. Book I (36 cents). — Primary Grades. Book II (48 cents). — Lower Grammar Grades. Book III (54 cents). — Upper Grammar Grades. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 213 8. "Child Life" (Blaisdell and Blaisdell). The Macmillan Company, cloth. A First Reader (25 cents). — Drill Material. A Second Reader (35 cents). — Child Life in Tale and Fable. A Third Reader (36 cents). — Child Life in Many Lands. A Fourth Reader (40 cents). — Child Life in Literature. FOR TEACHERS The following list of books may be found helpful: "Principles of Literary Criticism" (Winchester). The Macmillan Company, cloth, $1.50. "Talks on the Study of Literature" (Bates). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, $1.50. "How to Tell Stories to Children" (Bryant). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth $1.00. "The Teaching of English" (Chubb). The Macmillan Company, cloth $1.00. "How to Teach Reading" (Hall). D. C Heath & Co., paper, 25 cents. "Talks on Teaching Literature" (Bates). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, $1.30. "Literature in the Elementary School" (MacClintock). The University of Chicago Press, cloth, $1.00. "Literature and Life in School" (Colby). Houghton, Mifflin Company, cloth, $1.25. "Special Method in Reading English Classics" (Mc- Murry). The Macmillan Company, cloth, 75 cents. 214 LITERATURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS "Stories to Tell to Children" (Bryant). Houghton, Miillin Company, cloth, $1.00. "Tales Told in Palestine" (Hanauer). Jennings & Graham, cloth, $1.25. "English Versification" (Parsons). Sibley & Co., cloth, 80 cents. LIST OF PUBLISHERS Upon request any of these firms will furnish teach- ers with list price of publications. The ones marked thus * issue the very cheap editions. *Ainsworth & Co., Chicago. American Book Company, New York City. *Avon Book Company, New York City. A. S. Barnes & Co., New York City. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. A. L. Burt & Co., New York City. *Cassell & Co., New York City. Century Company, New York City T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York City. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York City. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York City. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. Educational Publishing Company, Boston. *A. Flanagan & Co., Chicago. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York City. Ginn & Company, Boston. Harper & Bros., New York City. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge, New York City. Henry Holt & Co., New York City. Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston. LIST FOR SUBSTITUTION 215 Jennings & Graham, Cincinnati. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston. Longmans, Green & Co., New York City. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, Boston. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. The Macmillan Company, New York City. *Charles E. Merrill Company, New York City. *The Orville Brewer Publishing Company, Chicago. Oxford University Press, New York City. Public-School Publishing Company, Bloomington, 111. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York City. Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago. Fleming H. Revell Company, New York City. Scott, Foresman & Co., Chicago. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Sibley & Co., Boston. Silver, Burdett & Co., New York City. G. E. Stechert & Co., New York City, Foreign Publications. E. Steiger & Co., New York City, Foreign Publications. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Most of these companies make a discount to teachers ordering directly from them. INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Abou Ben Adhem, 164 Adams, J. E., 211 Address at the Dedication of Gettysburg, 174 Adventures of a Brownie, The, 177, 203 Adventures of Ulysses, The, 160, 201 ^Eolus, 145 ^Esop's Fables, 178, 188, 204 A-Hunting of the Deer, 207 AladdSn, 159 Alcott, Louisa M., 189, 208 Aldrich, T. B., 150 Alice's Adventures in Wonder- land, 186, 207 Alhambra, The, 191, 209 All the World's a Stage, 170 Alton Locke, 109 Andersen, Hans, 147 Andrews, Jane, 181, 205 Animal Stories, 192, 209 Apocrypha, The, 192, 209 Apollo, 142 Appearance of the Shepherds, The, 145 Approved Selections for Read- ing and Memorizing, The, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 Arabian Nights, The, 97, 153, 185, 206 Argonauts, 151 Aristotle, 52 Arnold, Matthew, 11, 44, 54, 170, 202 Arrow and the Song, The, 159 Arthurian Legends, 86, 157, 186 Aurora, 142 Baby, The, 142 Baldwin, James, 187, 199, 207 Balzac, Honore de, 104 Bannockburn, 170 Barbara Frietchie, 159 Barefoot Boy, The, 155 Barmecide's Feast, The, 154 Bates, Arlo, 15, 134, 136, 213 Bayliss, Clara Kern, 181, 182, 205 Beauty and the Beast, 144 Bed in Summer, 145 Beetle, The, 147 Beginnings of Poetry, The, 134 Bellamy, Edward, 191 Bells, The, 171 Bennett, H. H., 164 Bible, The, 2, 44, 76, 87, 142, 145, 149, 154, 156, 192 Bible as English Literature, The, 77 Bible Stories for Young People, 154, 200 Bigham, Madge A., 180, 204 Birds and Bees, 207 Birds' Christmas Carol, The, 188, 207 Blaisdell, Etta Austin, 179, 204, 213 218 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Blaisdell, Mary Frances, 179, 204, 212 Blake, William, 145, 150 Blue Beard, 177 Bob, Son of Battle, 192, 209 Book of Famous Verse, A, 188, 207 Boy Blue and His Friends, 179, Boy's Life of Christ, The, 188, 208 Boy's Song, A, 145 Book of Heroic Ballads, A, 194, 210 Book of Nature Myths, The, 204 Bremen Town Musicians.The, 147 Bronson, Walter Cochran, 55, 75, 163, 165 Brooke, Stopford, 14 Brown, John, 187, 207 Brown Thrush, The, 150 Browne, Frances, 180, 205 Browning, Robert, 44, 48, 171 Bryant, Sara Cone, 213, 214 Bryant, William Cullen, 159, 168, 202 Bryce, Catherine T., 203 Bugle Song, The, 171 Burns, Robert, 26, 170, 171 Burroughs, John, 188, 207 Burt, Mary E., 180, 206 Byron, Lord, 164, 171 Cable, Mary B., 180 Cable Story Book, The, 191, 209 Call of the Wild, The, 193, 209 Carpenter, Edmund J., 164, 201 Carroll, Lewis, 183, 186, 206, 207 Cary, Phoebe, 145 Ceres, 145 Cervantes' Don Quixote, 168 Chambered Nautilus, The, 174 Charge of the Light Brigade, The, 171 Charlemagne Romances, 86 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 99 Child Life, 197, 213 Children's Hour, The, 155,197 Child's Don Quixote, The, 202 Child's Garden of Verses, A, 179, 204 Child's World, The, 150 Choice Literature, 196, 211 Choir Invisible, The, 100 Chretien, 86 Christmas Carol, A, 170, 202 Christmas Every Day, 183 Chubb, Percival, 213 Church, Alfred J., 187, 207 Cinderella, 144, 177 Classic Myths, 179, 204 Cleon and I, 104 Clytie, 142 Cock Robin, 138, 142 Colby, J. Rose, 15, 213 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 53, 146, 155 Collins, William, 159 Columbus, 174 Coming of Arthur, The, 187 Concord Hymn, 174 Cook, Agnes Spofford, 181, 205 Cooper, James Fenimore, 193, 210 Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 161, 201 Cowles, Julia Darrow, 149, 199 Crossing the Bar, 22 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS 219 Daffodils, The, 155 Dame Wiggins of Lee, 139 Dana, Richard H., Jr., 45, 190, 209 Daniel in the Lion's Den, 142 Daniel Webster for Young Americans, 174, 203 Dante Alighieri, 44 Daphne, 142 Darwin, Charles R., 38 Dasent, George W., 194 David, 150 Dawes, S. E., 200 Day is Done, The, 159 De Foe, Daniel, 147, 189, 208 De Garmo, Charles, 156, 200 Deluge, The, 149 De Quincey, Thomas, 16, 18 Destruction of Sennacherib, The, 164 Dewdrop, The, 142 Diana, 142 Dickens, Charles, 102, 170, 202 Diddie, Dumps, and Tot, 184, 206 Ding, Dong, Bell, 137 Dodge, Mary Mapes, 190, 209 Dog of Flanders, A, 183, 206 Dombey and Son, 102 Don Quixote, 86, 168 Dusk of the Gods, The, 194 Dutch Lullaby, A., 145 Eggleston, Edward, 186, 207 Eliot, George, 106 Elsie Venner, 109 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 11, 12, 14, 155, 167, 171, 174, 175, 190, 208 English versification, 61, 214 Euclid, 14 Eugene Field Book, The, 180, 205 Eugene Field Reader, 176, 203 Evangeline, 165, 202 Ewing, Juliana Horatia, 182, 205 Fables and Folk Stories, 198 Fairy, The, 177 Fairy Song, The, 155 Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know, 181, 205 Fairy Queen, The, 86 Farewell, A, 150 Farmyard Song, A, 150 Farthest North, 45 Field, Eugene. 145, 146, 176 Fitzpatrick, Sir Percy, 193, 209 Flying Dutchman, The, 194 For My Country, 146 Forbush, William Byron, 188, 208 Fountain, The, 155 Fox and the Grapes, The, 139 Franklin's Autobiography, 193, 210 French, Allen, 194, 210 French, Charles W., 189, 208, 211 Gardner, J. H., 77 Garland, Hamlin, 100 Gettysburg Speech, The, 172, 202 Gilbert, Charles B., 211 Gladstone, William E., 97 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 44 Gold Bug, The, 190, 208 220 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Golden Breasted Kootoo and Other Stories, The, 185, 206 Goldsmith, Oliver, 41 Good Name in Man or Woman, 171 Good-Night and Good-Morn- ing, 143 Goose Girl, The, 147 Goose that Laid Golden Eggs, The, 144 Gould, 155 Great Carbuncle, The, 164 Great Stone Face, The, 164 Greene, Frances Nimmo, 194, 200, 210 Grimm's German Household Tales, 146, 199 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, 146 Guerber, H. A., 192, 209 Gulliver's Travels, 157, 200 Gummere, Francis B., 134 H\ggard, Rider, 105 Hale, Edward Everett, 153, 173, 189, 192, 202, 206 Hall, G. Stanley, 84, 213 Hall, Jennie, 152, 199 Hall, Sara Josepha, 143 Hamlet, 39, 102, 168 Hanauer, J. E., 214 Hans Andersen's Stories, 147, 199 Hans Brinker, 190, 209 Hansel and Grethel, 147 Hare and the Tortoise, The, 147 Harris, Ada Van Stone, 203, 211 Harris, Alice L., 203 Harris, Joel Chandler, 185, 206 Harte, Bret, 100 Hats Oft'! The Flag is Pass- ing By, 164 Haunter of the Pine Gloom, The, 192 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 79, 98, 106, 164, 201, 205 Hawthorne's Wonder Book, 152, 181 Hazard, Bertha, 204 He Did n't Think, 145 He Prayeth Well, 155 Heart of Oak Books, 195, 197, 210 Heidi, 190, 208 Hellenic Tales, 164, 201 Hemans, Felicia, 159 Henny-Penny, 138 Henry Esmond, 100 Heracles the Hero of Thebes, 206 Hereward the W 7 ake, 109 Heroes of Asgard, 206 Heroes of Iceland, 194, 210 Hey Diddle Diddle, 137 Hiawatha Primer, The, 198, 204 Hickory, Dickory, Dock, 137 History of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The, 154 History of American Literature, A, 166 Hix, Melvin, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 Hogg, James, 145, 165 Hokey Pokey, 185 Holbrook, Florence, 198, 199, 204 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 114, 117, 164, 165, 174 Homer, 42, 44, 85 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS 221 Hoosier School Boy, The, 186, 207 House that Jack Built, The, 138 How Sleep the Brave, 159 How to Teach Reading, 84, 213 How to Tell Stories to Chil- dren, 213 Howells Story Book, The, 183, 206 Howells, W. D., 100, 183 Howitt, Mary, 150 Hughes, Thomas, 191, 209 Humble Bee, The, 171 Hunt, Leigh, 164 Husted, Mary Hall, 199 I Saw a Ship A-Sailing, 143 I saw an old Woman, 137 Idyls of the King, The, 39, 86, 186, 187, 207 If I Were a Sunbeam, 150 Iliad, The, 156 In Darkest Africa, 45 Ingelow, Jean, 146 Irving, Washington, 163, 191, 209 It is a Beauteous Evening Calm and Free, 25 Ivanhoe, 103, 173, 203 Jabberwock, The, 183 Jack and Jill, 137 Jack and the Bean Stalk, 144, 178 Jack Frost, 155 Jack the Giant Killer, 178 Jackanapes, 182, 205 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 155 Jacobs, Joseph, 188, 208 James, Henry, 98, 106 Jan of the Wind Mill, 182, 205 Japanese Fairy Tales, 180, 204 Jennie Kissed Me, 26 Jock of the Bushveldt, 193, 209 John Anderson, My Jo, 26, 27 Jones, Sir William, 171 Jordan, David Starr, 10 Jo's Boys, 208 Joseph, 150 Judd, Mary Catherine, 204 Julius Caesar, 191, 299 Jungle Book, The, 192, 209 Kalevala, 73 Keary, A. & E., 206 Keats, John, 36, 48 Kenilworth, 101, 104, 109 Kepler, Johann, 38 King Arthur and His Court, 200 King Arthur and His Knights, 207 King Henry the Fifth, 24 King Lear, 40 King of the Golden River, The, 156, 200 King of the Mamozekel, The, 192 Kingsley, Charles, 84, 150, 159, 200 Kingsley's Greek Heroes, 85, 151, 199, 205 Kipling, Rudyard, 105, 175, 192, 209 Kirk, Dolly Williams, 194, 210 Knight's Tale, The, 99 Krag and Johnny Bear, 183, 206 222 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Labors of Hercules, The, 185 Lady of the Lake, The, 172, 202 Lady or the Tiger, The, 105 Lamb, Charles, 160, 166, 201, 202 Lamb, Mary, 166, 202 Lamb, The, 145 Land of Song, The, 197, 212 Land of Story Books, The, 145 Landing of the Pilgrims, The, 159 Lareom, Lucy, 150 Lark and Her Young Ones, The, 144 Last Leaf, The, 164 Last of the Mohicans, The, 193, 210 Lead, Kindly Light, 174 Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The, 163 Les Miserables, 100 Letters to a Young Man, 16 Lights to Literature, 195, 211 Lincoln, Abraham, 172, 174, 202 Literature in Life and School, 213 Literature in the Elementary School, 213 Little Bo-Peep, 137 Little Boy Blue, 137 Little Gustava, 145 Little Lame Prince, The, 183, 205 Little Men, 208 Little Miss Muffett, 137 Little One Eye, etc., 143 Little People of the Sycamore, The, 192 Little Red Riding Hood, 143, 177 Little Thumb, 177 Little Women, 189, 208 Litsey, Edwin Carlile, 188, 208 Lobo, Rag, and Vixen, 183, 206 Lohengrin, 194 Lolami in Tusayan, 182, 205 Lolami, The Little Cliff Dweller, 181, 205 London Bridge, 138 London, Jack, 193, 209 Long, William J., 42 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 35, 62, 72, 73, 140, 144, 151, 155, 159, 161, 165, 171, 199, 201, 202 Looking Backward, 101, 108 Lord of the Air, The, 192 Lorna Doone, 100 Lowell, James Russell, 42, 155, 159, 171, 175, 202 Mabie, Hamilton W., 82, 156, 181, 200, 205 Macbeth, 168 MacClintock, Porter Lander, 213 Macdonald, George, 142 Mackay, Charles, 150, 163 McMurry, Charles, 83, 213 McMurry, Lida B., 199 McSpadden, J. Walker, 204 Malory, Sir Thomas, 86, 186 Man Without a Country, The, 173, 202 Marble Faun, The, 106 Marjorie's Almanac, 150 Marmion, 190, 208 Mary had a Little Lamb, 143 Master Singers, The, 194 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS 223 Matthews, Brander, 206 Maupassant, Guy de, 98 Merchant of Venice, The, 104, 168, 173, 203 Mercury, 145 Merry Animal Tales, 180, 204 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 168 Miller, Joaquin, 174 Miller of Dee, The, 150 Milnes, Richard Monckton, 143 Milton, John, 44, 174 Moore, Clement C, 151 Morley, John, 15 Morte d' Arthur, Le, 186 Mother Goose Melodies, 133, 136, 137, 142, 143 Mother Hubbard, 139 Mountain and the Squirrel, The, 155 Mouse and the Lion, The, 139 Mulock, Dinah Maria, 183, 203, 205 Murray, Clara, 212 My Native Land, 165 Myths of Northern Lands, 192, 209 Nansen, Fridtjof, 45 Nature Myths, 178 Narcissus, 149 Neptune, 145 New England Nun, The, 99 Newman, John Henry, 54, 174 Newton, Isaac, 38 Nicholas Nickleby, 108 Nights with Uncle Remus, 206 Noah's Ark, 145 Norse Stories, 156, 200 Norton, Charles Eliot, 197, 210 Niirnberg Stove, The, 206 O Captain ! My Captain, 171, 172, 202 Old Ironsides, 114, 116, 165 Old King Cole, 137 Old Oaken Bucket, 155 Old Stories of the East, 199 Old Testament Stories in Scrip- ture Language, 158, 201 Old Woman and her Pig, The, 138 Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, The, 137 Old World Wonder Stories, 177, 203 Ollivant, Alfred, 192, 209 On His Blindness, 174 Open Sesame, 196, 211 O'Shea, M. V., 198, 203 Othello, 28, 40, 46 Ouida, 183, 206 Owl, The, 150, 165 P arsons, James C, 61, 214 Passing of Arthur, The, 187 Paradise Lost, 48 Paul, 103 Pease Porridge Hot, 137 Perrault, Charles, 203 Perry, Bliss, 99 Perseus, 151 Pierre et Jean, 98 Pig Brother and Other Fables, The, 200 Pine Tree, The, 147 Piper, The, 150 Planting of the Apple Tree, The, 159 Pleiades, The, 142 Poe, Edgar Allan, 54, 171, 190, 208 Poems by Grades, 196, 211 224 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Poems from the Writings of Emerson, 190, 208 Poems of American Patriotism, 184, 206 Polonius' Advice to His Son Laertes, 174 Pride and Prejudice, 109 Princess on the Pea, The, 147 Principles of Literary Criticism, 16, 213 Proctor, Adelaide, 155 Prodigal Son, The, 142 Prometheus, 149 Proserpine, 145 Purloined Letter, The, 208 Puss in Boots, 144, 177 Pyle, Howard, 162, 201 Pyrnelle, L. C, 184, 206 Quality of Mercy, The, 174 Rab and His Friends, 187, 207 Race of the Swift, The, 188, 208 Radford, Maud L., 207 Rain in Summer, 155 Rain is Raining All Around, The, 143 Rainy Day, The, 171 Ray, Joseph, 14 Recessional, The, 175 Rein, Wilhelm, 148 Repplier, Agnes, 188, 207 Return to the Trails, The, 192 Reynard the Fox, 81, 188, 208 Rhinegold, The, 194 Rhodora, The, 175 Richards, Laura E., 185, 200, 206 Richardson, Charles F., 203 Rip Van Winkle, 163 Riquet of the Tuft, 177 Robert Louis Stevenson Reader, 177, 203 Roberts, Charles G. D., 192, 209 Robin Hood, Some Merry Adventures of, 162, 201 Robin Hood Tales, 86 Robinson Crusoe, 147, 158, 189, 199, 208 Robinson Crusoe Reader, 199 Rock-a-By Lady, The, 146 Rolf and the Viking's Bow, 189, 208 Rolfe, William J., 203, 209 Romeo and Juliet, 168 Romola, 108 Rose and the Ring, The, 186, 207 Rossetti, Christina, 143 Round the Year in Myth and Song, 198, 199 Rub-a-dub-dub, 137 Rumpelstiltskin, 147 Ruskin, John, 10, 20, 54, 156 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Au- gustin, 15 Samson, 150 Scott, Sir Walter, 14, 48, 79, 97, 100, 106, 165, 172, 173, 190, 202, 203, 208 Scudder, Horace E., 198 Sea, The, 155 Sella, 168, 202 September, 155 Seven Little Sisters, 181, 205 Seven Times One, 146 Shadow, My, 145 Shakespeare, William, 2, 14, 28, 40, 42, 44, 46, 87, 155, 156, 159, 165, 170, 171, 173, 174 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS 225 She, 105 She Was a Phantom of Delight, 175 Shell, The, 165 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 54 Sherman, Frank Dempster, 142 Shute, Katharine H., 212 Siegfried, 194 Silas Marner, 89, 101, 109 Simple Simon, 137 Sinbad the Sailor, 153 Sing a Song of Sixpence, 134, 137 Six Nursery Classics, 198 Six Selections from Irving's Sketch Book, 163, 201 Skylark, The, 165 Sleep, Baby, Sleep, 143 Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, The, 144, 177 Snowbound, 161, 174, 201 Snowstorm, The, 165 Snow- White and Rose-Red, 146 Sohrab and Rustum, 170, 202 Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, 162, 201 Song of Hiawatha, The, 62, 140, 144, 151, 199 Song of Roland, The, 86 Song of the Brook, The, 175 Songs of Labor, 161 Southey, Robert, 159 Special Method in Reading, 84 Special Method in Reading English Classics, 213 Spenser, Edmund, 86 Spider and the Fly, The, 150 Sprague, Homer B., 201 Spyri, Frau Johanna, 190, 208 Stanley, Henry M., 45 Stay, Stay at Home, My Heart, 159 Stedman, Clarence E., 55 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 102, 143, 145, 177, 179, 193, 204, 210 Stockton, Francis R., 105 Stories from the Arabian Nights, 200 Stories of Wagner Operas Told for Children, 193, 210 Stories to Tell to Children, 214 Story of Aladdin, The, 154 Story of Burnt Njal, 194 Story of Roland, The, 187, 207 Story of Siegfried, The, 187, 207 Story of Sindbad the Sailor, The, 154 Story of the Iliad, The, 187, 207 Story of the Odyssey, The, 187, 207 Story of Ulysses, The, 181, 205 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 191, 209 Succession of Forest Trees and Wild Apples, The, 207 Sweet and Low, 143 Swift, Jonathan, 157, 200 Tales from Shakespeare, 166, 202 Tales of Mother Goose, The, 177, 203 Tales of the White Hills, 164, 201 Tales of Troy, The, 156, 200 Tales Told in Palestine, 214 Talks on Teaching Literature, 136, 213 Talks on the Study of Liter- ature, 213 15 22G INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS Taylor, Jane, 143, 151 Teaching of English, The, 213 Tennyson, Alfred, 44, 48, 86, 143, 150, 165, 171, 174, 186 207 Tetlow, John, 199 Thackeray, William Make- peace, 186, 207 Thanatopsis, 168, 202 Thaxter, Celia, 145 There Was a Crooked Man, 137 There Was a Man in Our Town, 137 There Was a Sound of Revelry, 171 Theseus, 151 Thompson-Seton, Ernest, 42, 183, 206 Thoreau, Henry David, 188, 207 Three Bears, The, 139, 198 Three Fishers, The, 159 Three Years With the Poets, 179, 204 Through the Looking Glass, 183, 206 Tileston, Mary W., 194, 197, 210 To a Fringed Gentian, 159 To a Mouse, 171 To a Skylark, 165 Tom Brown's School Days, 191, 209 Tom He Was a Piper's Son, 137 Tom Thumb, 80, 144, 178 Tortoise and the Hare, The, 139 Traveller, the Cook, and the Little Old Man, The, 185 Treasure Island, 102, 193, 210 Trowbridge, J. T., 150 Twelfth Night, 168 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, 143 Two Years Before the Mast, 45, 190, 209 Ugly Duckling, The, 147 Ulysses, 97 Uncle Remus, 185 Uncle Tom's Cabin, 191, 209 Under the Greenwood Tree, 159 Vanity Fair, 108 Verne, Jules, 97 Vergil, 85 Viking Tales, 152, 199 Violet, The, 151 Vision of Sir Launfal, The, 171, 202 Visit from St. Nicholas, A, 151 Vulcan, 148 Wagner, Richard, 86 Wakefield, 98 Walkyries, The, 194 Walrus and the Carpenter, The, 183 Warner, Charles Dudley, 188, 207 Watchers of the Campfire, The, 192 Webster, Daniel, 174 Wendell, Barrett, 4 What Constitutes a State, 171 What is so Rare as a Day in June, 175 What the Birds Say, 146 Wheelock, Elizabeth M., 193, 210 White Cat, The, 144 INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS 227 Whitman, Walt, 171, 172, 202 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 155, 162, 174, 201 Whittington and His Cat, 177 Who Has Seen the Wind, 143 Wide Awake Series, The, 196, 212 Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 188, 207 Wild Ass's Skin, The, 104 Wilkins-Freeman, Mary E., 99 Williams, Sherman, 211 Williston, Theresa Peirce, 204 Wilson, Calvin Dill, 202 Winchester, C. T., 15, 37, 45, 111, 213 Wind, The, 143 Wind and the Sun, The, 144 Winter, 171 With Spurs of Gold, 194, 210 Wolf and the Lamb, The, 144 Woman in White, The, 100 Wonder Book, A, 205 Wonderful Chair and the Tales it Told, The, 180, 205 Woodberry, George E., 14 Woodworth, Samuel, 155 Wordsworth, William, 25, 37 44, 47, 52, 56, 155, 165, 175 World Wants Men, The, 159 Year's at the Spring, The, 171 You are old, Father William, 159 The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below DECS tg|* 141947 5 194 JAN 6 1SSCL Form L-9-15m-7,'31 1575 CBS Cox - Literature in the common schools . UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL L 16 "^)!.^. 1 , 1 ,!^.' AA 001 176 048 5 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA LOB ANUKL&a LIBRARY