THE YOUNG AND FIELD LITERARY READERS Book Six BY ELLA FLAGG YOUNG AND WALTER TAYLOR FIELD Author of "Fingerposts to Children's Reading," "Rome," Etc. Y F GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LONDON TO THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK As you take up these readers, one after another, you realize that in each one you can see a little farther into the great world of books. You are becoming better acquainted with the authors whose names you already knew, and you are making friends with some who before were strangers to you. In this volume you will find several about whom we have not talked before. Among Americans, there are Hawthorne, Howells, Aldrich, Emerson, Warner, James T. Fields, Mary Mapes Dodge, Audubon, and Dr. Jordan; among the writers of England are Browning, Cowper, Maria Edgeworth, and Leigh Hunt. But a most important part of Book Six is the section "Readings from Famous Books." Here you will learn of some of the greatest books that the world has known-books hundreds of years old, but so fresh and so full of interest and so alive that one never thinks of them as being old. They seem as new to-day as when they were written. Of these great books, you have already read in earlier volumes from the Bible and "The Arabian Nights." In this volume you will read, in easy form, stories from Homer's Odyssey," Vergil's "Eneid," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Spenser's "The Fairy Queen," Cervantes' "Don Quixote," and Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." Other plays of Shakespeare are greater than this, to be sure, but you will read them later; we have selected this because it will interest you now. Then there is the beautiful story of enchantment. which Milton wove into his poem "Comus"; and there are the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Defoe; and the voyages of Gulliver, by Swift. Some of these names may sound strange to you, but the stories are not hard, and they are stories which every well-educated person ought to know. Here is a feast of good things. We have given you enough to show you what each is like, and we think you will not be contented until you have found and read the books from which these selections are taken. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The selections from Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Aldrich, Warner, and James T. Fields are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of the works of these authors. Acknowledgments are also due to the following publishers for permission to reprint copyrighted selections from their books: to Harper & Brothers for the selection from Howells's "The Flight of Pony Baker"; to Charles Scribner's Sons for Lanier's "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and the selection from Mrs. Dodge's "Hans Brinker"; to the John Lane Company for the selection from Judge Parry's version of "Don Quixote"; to The Macmillan Company for the selection from Church's "The Fairy Queen and her Knights"; to Little, Brown, and Company for the selection from Francis Storrs' "Canterbury Chimes"; and to A. C. McClurg & Co. and the author for "The Story of a Salmon," from Dr. Jordan's "Science Sketches." THE ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS, FROM THE "ODYSSEY" Homer 141 THE WOODEN HORSE OF TROY, FROM THE "ENEID" CHANTICLEER AND THE FOX, FROM "CANTERBURY TALES" Geoffrey Chaucer, retold by Francis Storrs 179 THE RED CROSS KNIGHT AND THE DRAGON, FROM "THE FAIRY Edmund Spenser, retold by Alfred J. Church HOW DON QUIXOTE WAS MAde a Knight, from “Don QUIXOTE" |