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Copyright 1922
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SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY

For permission to use copyrighted material grateful acknowledgment is made to The Mark Twain Company, the Estate of Samuel L. Clemens, and to Harper and Brothers for "How Tom Sawyer Whitewashed the Fence" from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain; to Everybody's Magazine and the author for "The Elephant Remembers," by Edison Marshall; to Macmillan and Company, Ltd., for "The Wonders of the World We Live In" from The Beauties of Nature, by Sir John Lubbock; to Fleming H. Revell Company for "America" from From Alien to Citizen, by Edward A. Steiner; to Small, Maynard and Company for "Trees" from April Airs, by Bliss Carman; to Colliers and the author for "The Citizen," by James Francis Dwyer; to the author for "1620-1920," by L. B. R. Briggs; to the Century Magazine and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt for "Working Together in a Democracy" from "Fellow-Feeling as a Political Factor," by Theodore Roosevelt; to Henry Holt and Company for "The Tuft of Flowers" from A Boy's Will, by Robert Frost; to The Macmillan Company and the author for "The Hemp Fields" from The Reign of Law, by James Lane Allen; to Charles Scribner's Sons for "Trees and the Master" from Poems, by Sidney Lanier; to Poetry and the author for "April-North Carolina," by Harriet Monroe; to D. Appleton and Company, Poetry, and the author for "On the Great Plateau" from The Wind in the Corn, by Edith Wyatt; to Doubleday, Page and Company for "Plowing on a Wheat Ranch" from The Octopus, by Frank Norris, and for "The Romance of a Busy Broker," from The Four Million, by O. Henry; to Amy Lowell for "Lilacs"; to Letta Eulalia Thomas for "What America Means to Me"; to Edwin Markham for "Lincoln, the Man of the People" and "Creed." "Opportunity," by Edward R. Sill, is used by permission of and special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

For permission to use copyrighted pictures our thanks are tendered to Small, Maynard and Company for the halftone copy (in With Stevenson in Samoa, by J. B. Moors, copyright 1910) from which the picture on page 83 was adapted; to Agnes C. Gale for the halftone copy (in The Children's Odyssey, copyright 1912 by the Public School Publishing Company) for the picture on page 210; to Joseph Pennell for the drawing (in Pictures of the Wonder of Work, copyright 1916 by J. B. Lippincott Company) for the picture on page 563; to Underwood and Underwood for the photograph on page 480; and to The International News Service for the photograph on page 514.

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PREFACE

This volume is the first in a series of four books that provide material for an organized course in literature for secondary schools. In this series literature is regarded not as an end in itself, a subject in which facts are to be collected and memorized, but as an instrument through which the pupil may be initiated into the spiritual heritage stored up for him in books.

The first requirement to such an initiation is an abundant supply of carefully chosen selections from the best writers of all time. In the present volume, for example, the range in time is from Homer to the present. Of the fifty or more authors represented, one half are masters of former times whose works have become classics; the other half are recent or contemporary writers who are recognized interpreters of our own time.

A glance at the Table of Contents, however, will show that the editors have not regarded it as their task merely to supply a large amount of carefully chosen and graded material in rich variety and of recognized excellence. They have kept in mind the purpose set down in the opening paragraph of this Preface: the initiation of the child into the spiritual heritage stored up for him in books.

This spiritual heritage is perhaps the most important single element in the 'education of the child. We hear much, these days, about Americanization, the preparation of the child for citizenship. It is self-evident, we think, that if any such preparation stops with patriotic emotion plus a study of our political institutions, it has not met its full responsibility. The meaning of our democratic institutions is best understood by those who add to patriotic emotion and acquaintance with the machinery of government a training in the history of the ideals that underlie our faith, and especially a training in the ideals themselves as interpreted in literature.

Accordingly, this book and the others that follow in the series will be found to stress good citizenship. This term is defined in no narrow way. The treatment of it is not confined to a few patriotic selections for use on Washington's Birthday or to accompany the reading of the Declaration of Independence. It extends throughout the book, and is used in such a way as to bring out very clearly certain fundamental relations: the debt we owe to the past, the relations of human brotherhood, the relations between man and Nature. As Emerson rightly held, these three relationships are the foundation of all education: the mind of the past, the world of action, the world of Nature. By such organization the study of the book will reënforce powerfully the study of history, of social and political conditions, and of science, the three main divisions into which school and college courses are divided. The study of literature, therefore, is not a by-product, an occupation for leisure hours, but is made the heart of the school.

To this end, care has been taken not only to secure the right selection of literature, grouped under these fundamental divisions, but also to secure proper understanding of them as individual selections and as parts of a group. This is done, first, through the various introductions, written for the pupil, and in accordance with a definite plan that extends throughout the series. The general and special introductions, taken together, are an elementary treatise on how to read, on literary criticism, on the service of literature to life. These introductions cover a great variety of subjects: the nature of literature, the characteristics of poetry, the relation of literature to human history and the development of institutions, the types of literature, the value and kinds of versification and figures of speech, the history of literature itself.

The other aids to study are equally

distinctive. The editors have sought to avoid the over-annotation which always results from regarding the masterpiece as a unit in itself. The notes are not designed to show editorial erudition or minuteness; they are prepared to enable the pupil to come to a complete understanding of his reading without interrupting that reading a moment longer than necessary. At the end of the selection, or, in the case of longer units, at the chapter or scene divisions, will be found helps of two kinds. The first of these consists of explanatory notes giving additional information necessary to intelligent reading; the second and more important consists of questions to guide the pupil's reading as he prepares his lesson and also as the basis for class discussion. Many of these questions involve independent thinking. Many of them seek to connect his reading with other interests. The relation between literature and life in this series is no fanciful relation. It is organic, interwoven in many different ways into the body of the book and its method.

In this series as a whole two general conditions have influenced the choice of material. In the first place, the masterpieces required for admission to college under the conference plan are so fully represented that it will be unnecessary for separate classics to be purchased. Besides the advantage of economy, there is also in this plan the advantage of careful gradation and organization. Through many years of experience by hundreds of teachers there has grown up a fairly standardized list of minimum essentials, a list of books that every American boy or girl should know. These are presented without curtailment except in the case of some of the longer novels in which a plan for library reading with class discussion has been worked out. Teachers may supply, through the school library, a sufficient number of complete copies of these few books to enable the pupils to read them in connection with the study plans given in the text. But in the series as a whole more than enough of the classics in the

comprehensive as well as the restricted list are printed in full.

The second point is that the editors are in entire agreement with the statement of the aims and scope of the course in English as set forth in the recent report of the Committee on English of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. This series does not limit itself to a small list of books for intensive study; around these major works are grouped many others, so that there is abundant material for choice. Teachers may decide for themselves which selections are to be read rapidly and which are to be studied carefully and with detail. They may also condense and omit at will. The series as a whole thus supplies guidance for the teacher in making the course of study; it does not prescribe so narrowly as to destroy initiative or to prevent the choice of a course suited to special conditions. The books will be found especially adapted for use in schools that organize classes on a basis of uniform ability.

The course here provided has been checked carefully with such documents as the Report of the Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English, and with the special courses and syllabi provided by the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and others. Moreover, it illustrates the leading tendencies in the best modern teaching: wide variety and interest of subject matter, indisputable quality, the union of the contemporary and the classic, the study of such types of literature as the drama, the epic, the metrical romance, the ballad, the lyric, and prose fiction. Finally, interwoven with the plan will be found ample material for such study of the history of literature, both American and British, as the secondary school should undertake.

To all this material the publishers have given a typographical form that is dignified and attractive. The four volumes of the series will constitute a miniature selection of the best literature of the English-speaking peoples. They are not school texts to be used and thrown aside, but books worth a place in the permanent library.

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THE SPY (Chap. V and Plan for Library Work). James Fenimore Cooper.

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*This and all other units in the Literature and Life series are printed complete, unless otherwise indicated.

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