THE JONES FOURTH READER BY L. H. JONES, A.M. PRESIDENT OF THE MICHIGAN STATE NORMAL COLLEGE, FORMERLY BOSTON, U.S.A1, : GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS The Athenæum Pcess 1903 PREFACE THIS book is intended to cover the work in reading for the fourth and fifth school years. Pupils who enter the fourth school year are supposed to have mastered to at least a fair degree the mechanics of learning to read. They may therefore begin to appreciate the better class of literature, in which ideas are put forth in artistic form. The transition to such literature must needs be made slowly and carefully, inasmuch as the new matter brings with it a somewhat new vocabulary and a more complicated construction of sentence. The selections in the first part of this reader have been chosen with especial reference to bridging over for the child the natural chasm between the forms of thought and language of childhood and those appropriate to youth. The selections lead to the best in literature that is available for young readers. Attention is called particularly to the fact that many of the selections used are organic parts of larger works, to which the notice and interest of pupils will naturally be directed through the reading of these selected parts. Care has been taken that the part chosen in each case shall constitute an artistic literary whole, while sustaining its organic relations to the work from which it is taken. Great care has also been given to the kind and range of ideas embodied. The book has a distinctly moral bearing, assisting the young to form right ideas of life and conduct. Every department of laudable human aspiration and endeavor is represented in some appropriate concrete form, and every noble instinct is reënforced by its appropriate stimulus. 5 541125 |