THE HAWTHORNE READERS Indiana Edition LITERATURE A FOURTH READER By Edward Everett Hale, Jr., and Adeline Wheelock Sterling GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY New York, Chicago PREFACE IN this Reader the editors have put the main elements of literature before the student, without insisting upon the qualities that are distinctively literary. Before studying literature everybody becomes accustomed in a measure to the literary presentation of many things which common experience has made familiar. What is literature? It is the expression of the thought and feeling of certain chosen men of genius. About what do such men think and feel? Much the same sort of thing, the answer must be, that the rest of us do. The same world, the same nature, the same life is open to us as to them; but genius has given them power to express that which appears to eye and to mind. The subject-matter of the reader represents the elements of nature and of life which go to make up literature: the passage of the seasons, the round of men's holidays, the birds and the beasts, and the forces of nature, men's dealings with bird and beast and nature, and men's dealings with one another (namely, history, especially that of our own country), men's imaginations and fancies as we know them in legend and myth; in fact, whatever it is from which authors create what we call literature. But the idea of literary treatment has been, on the whole, absent; it has been left to a later period of with the subject-matter of the extracts, and to a study of good reading aloud. The extracts have been selected with a view of dealing with certain elements of observation and interest. The teacher's attention is called specifically to these points, and explanation is given of how they may be made most useful to the student. In regard to reading aloud, the student will, it is supposed, have passed through enough preliminary training to be able to read with understanding even rather difficult extracts. Hence the effort is made to show how to read aloud well. But as the art of reading is a complicated matter, and calls for a treatise or a teacher, or both, it has been thought best to avoid any attempt at really technical treatment of elocution, and to confine this part of the introduction to such practical remarks as experience has shown are a useful supplement or suggestion to the work of a good teacher. Where there is no opportunity for definite work in elocution, such hints will be found of great benefit when taken in connection with the reading lesson. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WE desire to offer our thanks and acknowledgments to those authors and publishers who have kindly allowed us to use works which they control. We mention particularly the kindness of: D. Appleton & Company, publishers of Bryant's complete poetical works, for the use of Bryant's "Robert of Lincoln" and "Song of Marion's Men"; Rev. Edward E. Hale, D.D., for the use of a part of his poem "The Great Harvest Year"; Harper & Brothers, the publishers of Curtis's "Prue and I" and Mrs. Sangster's "Little Knights and Ladies," for the use of "Castles in Spain" and "My Goldenhaired Laddie "; Henry Holt & Company, the publishers of " A Book of Verses for Children," compiled by Edward Verrall Lucas, for the use of "A Song of St. Francis" by Henry Neville Maugham; J. B. Lippincott Company, publishers of Read's "The Wagoner of the Alleghanies," for the use of "The Uprising in '75"; Little, Brown & Company, the publishers of the poems of Helen Hunt Jackson and of her "Ramona," for the use of "April," "The Legend of St. Christopher," and "The Moreno Sheep Shearing "; G. P. Putnam's Sons, the publishers of the only authorized editions of the works of Washington Irving 7 |