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PAGE PREFACE v

BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

PART I

INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN

THE VALUE OF GOOD BOOKS

"The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments."

THE man who believes that education and books are designed for the imparting only of useful information had better read no farther than this sentence; for if he does, he will be irritated many a time by what he regards as ideal and foolish and unworthy of a practical age. But if he believes life to be something more than meat and the body something more than raiment, and that he needs his books as well as his cloak brought into Macedonia, he may with patience and sympathy follow the guesses herein at the ways and means by which good books may be brought into the life of a boy. For in the living out of the great story of securing shelter and food and raiment, the boy who has never felt the charm of a great book in chimney-corner days, or the man who has never pored over a "midnight darling" by candlelight, has missed one of the most refined and harmless pleasures of life. The very books themselves are refining because they make up the art of literature, an art that is in its highest sense an expression and interpretation of life. This art deals with the beautiful. Its appeal is primarily to the feelings. Its basis is truth whether actual or hoped for. It is this very nature of literature itself that at the start brings up the question whether the investment put into it is really worth while. How far has education a right to develop a sense of the beautiful? What abiding pleasures and tastes, if any, should the boy of school age seek and cultivate? Just what equipment for life does a boy need, anyhow?

These are big questions; they are knotty questions. They have never been settled because they cannot be answered in a way satisfactory to all. They are rather questions of temperament than of logic. To attempt an investigation into the claims of literature in a scheme of education, and to draw from such claims a logical conclusion, is beyond the ability, knowledge, or inclination of the writer; only personal impressions will be attempted in the chapters that follow. And besides, such an investigation, if it could be made, would be so out of fashion among schoolmasters at the present time that it might bring nothing but reproach on the one attempting it. The very convenient plan is to assume a certain educational specific as true and from that assumption to go straight to a favourable conclusion. In accordance with this fashion it seems the easiest way to take the privilege of the day and without more ado assume that books of literature are necessary in the education of a boy, and conclude therefrom that a principal business of the teacher is to train the boy to read books intelligently and to form a substantial taste for them. And why should not a schoolmaster who dotes on a few old favourites have an unshaken faith in his assumption and go merrily on to the business of the literature itself and what may be done toward developing among school children a taste for it?

The late Professor Norton pointed out that a taste for literature is a result of cultivation more often than a gift of nature. The years of the elementary school seem to be the time in which cultivation is easiest and the one in which the taste takes deepest root. Vigorous and tactful effort will go far to develop pure taste and abiding taste for books.

The present age is more concerned about pure food than about pure books--maybe an exemplification of John Bright's wish that the working-men of England eat bacon rather than read Bacon. The bulky, coarse food of the last century has been displaced by the sealed package of condensed food done according to a formula, and a mystery to the man who eats it. So is it in our books. We do not have the frankness and vulgarity of the eighteenth century; but instead, we have the most studied forms of insinuation, the harm of which was not approached by the coarseness of former times. Many a present-day story makes the ordinary course of life seem uninteresting, a dangerous thing for a book to do, according to Ruskin. The conduct portrayed has in it too much of personal freedom arising out of caprice, breaking too much with traditional right through what a critic once designated as "debauching innuendo and ill favoured love." The book is often spectacular or sullen in tone. It may be melodramatic, leaving the reader rebellious or with a weakened sense of responsibility. Or again, it may be given to boisterous laughter over situations based on personal misfortune or bad manners--the way of the comic supplement. And worst of all, it may become the fashion; that is, a best seller. Its name and some of its motives will probably get to the children through the talk of the parents. Then to persuade the reading public that the pure taste for the healthful story is much more worth while will try the resources of the teacher. Yet that is exactly what should be expected of him--a Herculean task and a most thankless one.

To secure a stable as well as a pure taste for things worth while in books should be an aim of the teacher. He must do this in an age when the vaudeville idea is deep-rooted. Variety takes the place of sustained attention. This begets the mood for profligacy. Something new and good is expected to turn up in the shape of a book. In this mood there is nothing to inspire to steady purpose. And it seems that the best thing left for the teacher to do is to "come out strong" on a few good books. Through fortune and misfortune such books will be permanent possessions to their reader.

The responsibility for securing this pure and abiding taste rests primarily with the teacher. He needs to know and to appreciate the good books which he desires the boy to read. He needs to know the poem or story at first hand, not criticism about it. If the teacher has real appreciation for a piece of literature, the boy will discern it in his face. Then the boy can be put on the right scent and left to trail it out for himself, as Scott long ago suggested. Time must be taken to do this: a few good things must be done without fuss or hurry. It is foolish to have a taste surfeited as soon as cultivated. Here is truly a place to be temperate as well as enthusiastic.

A teacher should be able to read aloud from a book with good effect. The voice can bring out the finer touches that are likely to be missed by the eye. No explanation in reading is so good as is adequate vocal expression. In fact, as a rule, the less explaining the better. If there is a single thing that for the last dozen years has stood in the way of boys' and girls' appreciating good literature, it is the so-called laboratory method. Of all the quack educational specifics that have been advanced, the laboratory method, with a poem or an imaginative story, has been the most presumptuous and absurd. Who cares to treat fancies and fairies according to formulae? One might as well apply the laboratory method to his faith and his hopes in his religion.

In this struggle to bring good books into the life of the boy, many opposing forces must be met with tact and with patience. Censorship of books, like inspection of foods, may be highly desirable; but by no means is it efficacious. The worthless book will continue to obtrude itself at all times and on all occasions. Then there are the reading habits of the community, the notions of parents about what the child should read, and the child's own natural or acquired tastes,--these must all be reckoned with. Here are a few of the opposing forces to be encountered in every community:

The juvenile series--the hardest problem to handle from the book side of the question. The series is always "awful long," all of the volumes are cut to the same pattern, they are always in evidence, and they are all equally stupid. The themes range from boarding school proprieties to criminal adventure; and they are all equally false to the facts of real life or the longings for true romance. What shall be done with them?

The ease of access of the child to the daily paper with headlines inviting attention to the doings of police courts and clinics.

The eagerness with which children read the comic supplement and even ask at the public library if books of that class of humour cannot be had.

The low-grade selection that is many times given the child by the school reader as subject-matter from which to learn the great art of reading.

The prejudice of parents and even of communities against fairy tales and all forms of highly imaginative literature--the hardest thing to meet from the reading side of the question. Librarians are requested not to give fairy books to children. Such books are thought to be bad. The demand is for true books. Parents have not discovered the existence of the imagination and the part it has played in the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual progress of man. But must school teachers not first recognize the truth of this last statement before parents are expected to do so?

The impression that books of information are real literature and that they ought to be sufficient subject-matter for any child's reading.

The belief that books should teach facts and point morals rather than entertain and refine and inspire.

The early acquired taste of boys and girls for stories of everyday life; boys turning to the athletic story and girls to the school story.

Excessive reading and reading done at the suggestion of a chum.

Lack of ownership of books and of the rereading of great books.

The passing of the practice of reading aloud about the fireside.

The teacher will surely need to summon his judgment, courage, and perseverance if he is to succeed measurably in the effort for good reading. Let him not forget that his most enduring work will not be seeking to cut off from the child the book that is not good, nor yet convincing the parents that this or that book is good or bad; but it will be getting the interest and confidence of the child himself. When the teacher comes to consider that a boy naturally loves a hero, and like Tom Sawyer longs to "die temporarily," or that a girl is naturally curious to open the forbidden door of the closet as was Fatima, he cannot but see that this is good ground where the right seed will spring up many fold. Here then is the place for the teacher to sow with care. For him, the pages that follow are designed as something of a guide in the field of children's books, if, whilst working as a husbandman therein, by chance he feels the need of a fellow labourer.

BOOKS AND LITERATURE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

"He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts." --SIR NATHANIEL.

THE place of literature in the primary and grammar grades of schools needs neither a defence nor an apology. Being a part of that branch called reading, it is fundamental in the course. The claims set up by branches other than that of reading and speaking English do not concern us here. We assume that the first portion of time in a programme is allotted to this. The object may be dramatic expression in the lower grades, getting the exact thought from a printed page and reproducing it in the upper grades, drill in the mechanical details of the language, such as spelling and pronunciation; or it may be that rare growth of personality that comes, say, through the skilful reading of poetry aloud. Without a fair degree of mastery of the elements of reading and speaking English by the time he completes the grammar grade work, the boy will enter a secondary school or turn to earning a living, ill-equipped either to organize and express his own thoughts, or to find profit and pleasure in gathering the thoughts of another from a printed page--the greatest accomplishment that a school can give to any one. It is rather common to hear a high school student say that he cannot get the story by reading "The Lady of the Lake." This inability is a positive discredit to what should be normal mental vigour; and such a student will be found inefficient for the serious business of life or the refined pleasure of the fireside.

Now it behooves teachers to put on their thinking caps and devise ways and means that will help students to get the thought from reading, to tell this thought, and to appreciate the excellencies of good English books. And they must do this single-handed and alone in the day school, for but little help can be looked for from the Sunday school, from many public libraries, and from the home as it is now governed. The child is turned over to the teacher to train, and in that child lurk two tendencies of American social life: the hope of getting something for nothing and the passion for constant variety. And these tendencies are unchecked by any exercise of that old-time positive authority in the home, that had much salutary influence on young barbarians. But through a foolish tolerance, the boy drifts into many habits that do not include the exemplary ones of sustained attention, industry, thrift, and self-reliance,--habits that make for efficient life. A royal road to knowledge is expected, and travel thereon is to be unrestricted by respect either for age or for authority. His hay must always be sugared. He becomes a creature of whims, and with this creature the teacher finds his task in hand. What are the reading habits and tastes that he brings from his home, and how can the teacher best improve them?

It is clear to even a casual observer that children leave the public school without the groundwork for a course of reading either for pleasure or for profit through life. It is also clear that they will get little help in this line from places other than the public school as things now obtain. And it is equally clear that the reading habits formed before the age of fourteen years are the habits and tastes that last. If then, according to his natural gifts, the student is to be led to gather the fullest measure from the field of literature, it is the special duty and privilege of the teacher to direct that gathering. To this attempt to develop a taste for good literature, some one may raise the objection that it will not fit all children--and the objection is well taken. The appeal of literature is not universal. There are a few persons who find its counterpart in a study and appreciation of the beauties and wonders of nature. Then again there are many who, instead of taking themselves to the art of books, find pleasure in perhaps the greatest of all arts, the art of social intercourse--an art that is universal enough to reach from vagabondia to the very exclusive set. However, there is a vast class devoted to a subdued and refined domestic life, and here it is that good books will bear good fruit many fold. With this class the teacher must work. What then is to be given to the children?

Of course it is understood that we are to deal with the enduring literature of childhood, the literature of power. And it is also to be understood that reading is to be done in moderation and with care. Then again it is evident that a certain amount of reading must be prescribed and thoroughly mastered. Reading must be from what is standard down to the point of appeal, lest the point always hold the boy to the earth earthy. After a taste for onions has once been developed, little hope can be entertained of making the boy a judge of the delicate flavour of grapes--they will hang high. The teacher must assert a bit of that healthful positive authority that sets many an urchin on the right path. A limited choice from books that are classics may be given in good time. All the chords of life have been struck in great literature, and a fair knowledge and good judgment can reach almost any disposition, even the most whimsical.

The thing of first importance to be prescribed is learning classical poetry by heart until its music has taken a hold on the learner. Introduce the boy to the varied field of lyric poetry and you have put before him one of the rarest and most abiding pleasures of life. Here his troubled heart may always find consolation. Nothing will bring him to a sense of his own personality with such a deft touch as a perfect lyric coming to him through his own voice. The next thing to look to is a right that is a fixed right of childhood and one that it is positively vicious to suppress, the right to the land of fairy life. A free range here will be meat and drink to any boy. Much sordidness and much selfishness in old age come to the man or woman who has not a cultivated imagination. Logic and cold facts are of precious little value in the fireside life of a family. The best things of that life are not reasoned out; but they are felt out and wondered out. Again, the great field of mythology that is so fundamentally linked to that of literature, and that is a capital mark of culture, should be open to the boy that he may roam about and wonder at its mysteries. Then he may as certainly come to own an "Age of Fable" as he must own a "Golden Treasury." And what a pair are these!

From these three fields the step will be to a knowledge and classification of books and their authors, what books to own, and how to take care of them. And to this working grasp of poetry and stories may be added a little of what is possible in history, biography, and personal essay. In this age of cheap and spurious book-making the reader must know standard editions without abridged and garbled texts. Even editors of hymn books do not hesitate to mutilate great hymns to suit their particular notions. This freedom may be a form of that exaggerated idea of personal privilege that was the gift of democracy in the past century. A good knowledge of fables and proverbial wisdom will certainly temper that notion. Such are some of the things that might be prescribed by the teacher and learned by the student. The field as thus given is limited, but the friends therein are dear friends. Nor are they to be exchanged for the new friends that may come through the advertising appeal, founded on the unsubstantial instinct for constant variety.

If enough idea of authority can ever be driven into the head of the American boy to put him into the attitude of a willing learner, good things may be looked for in habits of reading--provided the teacher be equal to the responsible task that is laid upon him. The habits of reading that measure the use of spare time, and in that way the character of the individual, will work for a more sane and less showy home life and through that for a community given to other than obtrusive and frivolous social life. What bundle of habits will serve its slave better than will this bundle? Or where is keener and more subdued pleasure to be found? Though books are a bloodless substitute for life, as Stevenson has well pointed out, we need some substitute in our hours of ease, and a good book does passing well for such a substitute; and this is especially true if the book be our favourite from the wonderful Waverley series and with it we can square about to the fire, snuff the candle, and let the rest of the world go spin.

THE LEARNING OF LYRIC POETRY

"These verses be worthy to keep a room in every man's memory: they be choicely good."

--From "The Complete Angler."

Here it may not be amiss to mention the claim of the imagination to consideration as a faculty of the mind and inquire to what extent it should be cultivated in our schools; for if its claim be not good, there is no warrant for using any of the literature of power as subject-matter for education. Bearing on this question is the following excellent remark by the late Charles Eliot Norton, who did so very much to raise the standard of culture in American education: "The imagination is the supreme intellectual faculty, and it is of all the one that receives least attention in our common system of education. The reason is not far to seek. The imagination is of all faculties the most difficult to control, it is the most elusive of all, the rarest in its full power. But upon its healthy development depend not only the sound exercise of the faculties of observation and judgment, but also the command of the reason, the control of the will, and the growth of the moral sympathies. The means for its culture which good reading affords is the most generally available and one of the most efficient." In the same discussion Professor Norton has this to say of poetry as the highest expression of the imagination: "Poetry is one of the most efficient means of education of the moral sentiment, as well as of the intelligence. It is the source of the best culture. A man may know all science and yet remain uneducated. But let him truly possess himself of the work of any one of the great poets, and no matter what else he may fail to know, he is not without education."

To the evident truth of these quotations the humanist will readily assent; and so will the true scientist whose earnest and frank devotion to truth makes it clear to him that nothing great in his field has ever been done without a constructive imagination. The loss of artistic imagination through years of painstaking investigation will be a source of regret to any one devoted to science, as was the loss of the ability to appreciate the charm of great poetry Darwin's old age regret. The taste for this great poetry is grounded on healthful and normal instincts, and it is the part of wisdom to see that this taste be developed in youth. The boy who has nurtured his youthful imagination on the magic of great verse will waken up some morning to find himself among the competent ones of his generation. His life will be bounded by that restraint which can come only through an inability to solve the mysteries and wonders that his imagination is constantly conjuring up. He wants much that he cannot understand and reason out; and the deeper things of life, things which touch him most vitally as a living creature, he looks on with re

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