LIBRARY

Leland Stanford, Jr.
UNIVERSITY

C

COPYRIGHTED

BY EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

1904.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

Valuable assistance will be found in the "Foreword," "Preface," and "Biographical
Notes," of this volume. It is earnestly suggested, therefore, that both teachers and
pupils carefully read these portions.

S. E. S.

FOREWORD.

Read not to contradict and confute, or to believe and take for granted, or to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books, also, may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.

Reading makes a full man; conference, a ready man; and writing, an exact man; therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that which he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. Studies pass into character. -Lord Francis Bacon.

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PREFACE

PURPOSE. "Studies pass into character," says Lord Bacon in his admirable essay on Studies, a portion of which we have used as the "Foreword to this volume, and which we earnestly commend to teachers and pupils for thoughtful reading by way of preparation to the best use of this book.

"Do you know what fairy palaces you may build with good thoughts?" asks John Ruskin, the celebrated English art critic and reformer. Long before Ruskin's time, Sir Philip Sidney voiced a similar sentiment by saying, "They are never alone who are accompanied with noble, true thoughts." About two hundred and fifty years later, Sir Walter Scott used his fast-failing breath to murmur, Be a good man, my dear; be a good man":—perhaps the most potent for good of any words that the famous novelist and poet ever gave to the world with tongue or pen; and Horace Mann, the pioneer educational reformer of the United States, sums up the whole subject of thinking and living by saying, "It is well to think well: it is divine to act well." In harmony with the above sentiments, our purpose, in preparing the present series of readers, has been to have them full of "good, noble, true thoughts": to give children—while they are learning to read—a broader mental horizon : to impart such ethical, literary, and æsthetic culture as they can understand and assimilate to keep before their conciousness happy and interesting examples of correct living. In the present volume, all this remains as the sub-stratum upon which to build impulses and half-formed resolves into ideals and principles to shape and control the character of these future citizens.

THE SITUATION. It is but fair to assume that, now, pupils have mastered the general technicalities of reading aloud: that they have a reasonably good knowledge of reading as an art and as a science: that their literary taste has been developed along right lines: that a standard of good reading has been fully established: consequently, they are now ready for the deeper thinking, and the closer analytic work here required. If our work has been well done, pupils will welcome the reading period as an hour of intellectual pleasure, wherein they may come into happy fellowship with the great writers of the world, past and present. They have learned to read: now, and henceforth, they will read to learn: to enjoy. The test of our past work is, do they bring to this more advanced reading a taste for that which is clean and wholesome in literature? The test of any series of readers should be: What of value will remain to the pupils through their use -over and beyond the mere art of reading?

Will they, at the end, know and choose good literature to read? Will they be equipped to grapple successfully with any reading the future may bring? Will they learn such noble ideals of life and literature from the readers as will cause them to turn resolutely away from the vicious and debasing?

CONTENTS. In choosing material for this volume- which completes Book Five, and also the series we have kept in mind the same standards of judgment as mentioned in the Preface to Part One. In addition, we have been particularly careful to make the pupils familiar with the greatest writers of English, and to use only that which is typical of the various standard forms of correct English style. The graceful, smooth, and flowing; the strong, clear, and terse; the grave, and the gay all are here in attractive form. Pupils are led to higher levels of thought and feeling; reasoning is more subtle and analytic; difficulties of construction are as great as any found beyond school life. Hence, this volume, in reality, not only furnishes pupils basic material for the interpretation of most phases of thought and emotion, but is a genuine introduction to the world's great writers, and forms an interesting steppingstone to the specific study of permanent literature. The added difficulties of thought and expression demand more serious work from the pupils. Some small portion of the material they may not be able, now, to assimilate wholly; but it will remain with them, and, in good time, become a part of themselves. Even now, it is not a bad thing for pupils to learn that Browning expounded a valuable principle of work when he said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp.'

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SCOPE. Book Five, as a whole, furnishes sufficient material for the basic work in reading for the sixth, seventh and eighth grades of school. The selections are chosen, graded, and adjusted, with the intent to keep pupils fully interested; to take them forward with even advancement; and to call forth their highest powers in the art of reading aloud. It is more than a mere reading book: it is an elementary volume of high-grade literature. It, moreover, serves the added purpose of furnishing many short selections that are admirably adapted for use as declamations.

PHILOSOPHY. Zangwill, the Jewish poet and novelist, somewhere remarks, "Fiction is the highest form of truth." Good illustrations of this are found in George Eliot's "Silas Marner," from which we have taken two lengthy selections. From these, from "King Bele and Thorsten Vikingsson," and from others, the pupils gain an insight into the philosophical principles governing the lives of men and women. They see - all through this volume - more of the reflective side of life, and somewhat less of its activity; or, rather, they see the activity