PREFACE In the preparation of this book there has been no attempt to make it in any sense a special reader. It touches the all-round life of the child. The great sources of the world's inspiration have been drawn upon,-nature, art and literature, science, fable, and myth. The attempt is made to bring the child close to his work and his play, to history, poetry, and story, to children at home and to children in other lands; and to lay the emphasis not on the warrior hero but on the constructive hero of peace. The development of the large world conception of our relationship to humanity as a whole follows close after the inculcation of Gentleness, And mercy to the weak, and reverence for life. In arrangement of subjects the book follows the school year. A group of correlated topics in natural sequence touches on the fall work, leading up to the Thanksgiving story, thence to the Christmas story, and so on, to the subjects connected with spring and summer with which the book ends. A special feature is the group of Siegfried stories, which form a serial running through the reader. They are the musical motif to which nearly all the matter of the book adapts itself. The awakening of Brunhilde is only the personifying of the resurrection of the earth at the touch of Spring. It is suggested that the reading be preceded by much story-telling, that the child may be ready to enter into the spirit of the masters. In order to do this the teacher must herself keep close to the great sources, to the world's great poetry, to stores of myth and fable, to the masters of art. As Mr. William T. Harris so ably says: "This is the only antidote for the constant tendency of the teacher to sink into a dead formalism, the effect of too much iteration and of the practice of adjusting knowledge to the needs of the feeble-minded, by perpetual explanation of what is already simple ad nauseam for the mature intelligence of the teacher. It produces a sort of pedagogical cramp in the soul for which there is no remedy like a philosophical view of the world unless, perhaps, it be the study of the greatest poets, Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer." The illustrations in this reader are from reproductions of famous paintings or from photographs taken by artists. The stories have all stood the practical test of use in the schoolroom. As story-teller to groups of children for several years, one of the writers discovered for herself that the world's great literature presents forms of dramatic thought which can be brought within the child's comprehension, and to which the whole being of the child most readily responds. In a word, the simple purpose of this book has been to avoid formalism and hackneyed thought, and in every possible way to retain the spirit that giveth life. The selections from Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Frank Dempster Sherman, and Mrs. Whitney are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of their works. Grateful acknowledgments are also due to Little, Brown & Co. for permission to use "October's Bright Blue Weather" by "H. H.," "The Rainbow" and "Who Has Seen the Wind?" by Christina Rossetti, and "How the Leaves Came Down" by Susan Coolidge; to Harper & Brothers for "The Lost Playmate" by Abbie Farwell Brown, published in Harper's Magazine; to Isabel Sturtevant Burton for the poem "June"; to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for the use of material adapted from the poems of Celia Thaxter and of Longfellow; to the A. Flanagan Company for material adapted from "Nature Myths" by Flora J. Cooke; and to the Educational Publishing Company for "James Watt and the White Giant" from the Young Folk's Library of Choice Literature"; also to J. Horace McFarland, Frances and Mary Allen, and Curtis & Cameron for the use of copyright or special pictures. CELIA RICHMOND HARRIET RICHMOND |