American Literature Through Illustrative Readings

The character of such a course in American literature as is intended by the use of this handbook is extensive rather than intensive. The pupils must, from the nature of the case, make free use of the library. The mere handling of many books is valuable training. A splendid opportunity is also offered for the preparation of special topics. Here the work should become more specialized and detailed than for the daily class preparation. And last, but not least important, such a course gives frequent chance for oral reading. Perhaps, indeed, this is the most effective means of inducing appreciation of the author under consideration. Says Professor Rose Colby in Literature and Life in the School: "The best response to be secured by the teacher from the student," in the work on any bit of literature, "is the fullest interpretative vocal rendering of it." Thus such a course in American literature may be viewed incidentally from various angles as a course in library work, or a course in special-topic reports, or a course in oral reading any one of which would be valuable per se.

The bibliographies contain suggestions for further readings in the authors treated in this volume and also suggestions for readings in certain authors from whom, owing to copyright restrictions, it was impossible to get extracts.

Thanks are due to the publishers for permission to use the following selections: The Open Shop, by Lyman Abbott, The Outlook Company; The Story of the Doodang, from Uncle Remus and the Little Boy, by Joel Chandler Harris, Small, Maynard & Co; To the Death, from The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, Some Memories of Childhood, from Richard Carvel, by Winston Churchill, The Child and America to England, by George E. Woodberry, Bimini and the Fountain of Youth, from Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Changes

of the Nineteenth Century, from Democracy and Education, by Nicholas Murray Butler, Ode on the Centenary of Abraham Lincoln, by Percy MacKaye, The Macmillan Company; The Wheat Pit, from The Pit, by Frank Norris, The Count and the Wedding Guest, by "O. Henry," Nature in Poetry, from Songs of Nature, by John Burroughs, The Man with the Hoe, by Edwin Markham, Doubleday, Page & Company; The Call of the Bugles, by Richard Hovey, Duffield & Company; John Gilley, from John Gilley, Maine Farmer and Fisherman, by Charles W. Eliot, Hugh's School Days, from Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker, by S. Weir Mitchell, China to the Ranging Eye, from The Changing Chinese, by Edward Alsworth Ross, The Century Company; The Old Man and Jim, by James Whitcomb Riley, The Bobbs-Merrill Company; By the Pacific Ocean and Dead in the Sierras, by Joaquin Miller, The Death of McKinley, from The Lessons of the Tragedy, in The Voice of the Scholar, by David Starr Jordan, The Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Company; Worth While and Recrimination, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The W. B. Conkey Company; My Double and How He Undid Me, by Edward Everett Hale, Little, Brown & Company; His Christmas Miracle, from The Raid of the Guerilla, by Mary N. Murfree, The J. B. Lippincott Company; A Southern Girl, and My Little Girl, by Samuel Minturn Peck, The Frederick A. Stokes Company; The Vocabulary, from Self-Cultivation in English, by George H. Palmer, The Thomas Y. Crowell Company; The Death of the Flowers, To a Waterfowl, The Hurricane, and To the Fringed Gentian, by William Cullen Bryant, D. Appleton & Company; A Coon Song, by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, The Feeling for Literature, from Books and Culture, by Hamilton Wright Mabie, The Other One, by Harry Thurston Peck, Dodd, Mead & Company.

The selections from the writings of Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, Stowe, Phelps, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Sill, Hay, Howells, James, Gilder, and Arlo Bates are reprinted by permission and special arrangement with the publishers, the Houghton Mifflin Company.

S. E. S.