SUGGESTIONS FOR ORAL AND WRITTEN ENGLISH THEME SUBJECTS Write for a newspaper in the town where they were known, an account of the fate of the family (their name was Willey). As the public usually reads news hurriedly, put the most important item in the first sentence. Follow with details in the order of their importance, beginning with the most important. How does this method differ from the one you have been following? The newspaper account should answer very near the beginning these questions: Who? When? Where? Why? Write in a letter to a friend an account of this catastrophe, as if you had remained in the cottage. Imagine that you have had a lucky escape of some kind, and write a telegram to your mother, assuring her of your safety. Follow the telegram with a letter giving fuller details. Explain your idea of the term, "Home." Read Robert Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night, and report to the class what is Burns's idea of "home." Think over an unexpectedly pleasant ending of an adventure that you have had and tell it to the class. Be careful not to hint too strongly that the ending will be pleasant. SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS Rappaccini's Daughter (Mosses from an Old Manse). Nathaniel Hawthorne. The White Old Maid (Twice-Told Tales). Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Cause of the Difficulty (in Tales of the Home Folks). Joel Chandler Harris. The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. Charles Egbert Craddock. The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde (in A Chosen Few). Frank R. Stockton. them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter. "Ah, this fire is the right thing!" cried he; "especially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett." "Then you are going toward Vermont?" said the master of the house, as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders. "Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night; but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire, and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and make myself at home." The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct. "The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together pretty well on the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest." Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit haughty and reserved among the rich and great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had traveled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large, which in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth? The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope: and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,— though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, THE HUMBLEBEE1 RALPH WALDO EMERSON Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was born in Boston. He was descended from a long line of New England clergymen. As a boy, he was so poor that he and his brother attended school on alternate days because they had only one coat between them. Despite his poverty, he managed to graduate from Harvard. He became a clergyman and preached for a time in Cotton Mather's church. His belief did not wholly accord with that of the church, so he gave up preaching, and spent the rest of his life in writing and lecturing. His Essays, such as the one on Self-Reliance, are his most popular works, but he also wrote some exquisite verse. His most enjoyable poetry has some phase of nature for its subject. This was his poetic creed: See also: "In the deep heart of man a poet dwells Halleck's History of American Literature, pp. 178-193, 283. Woodberry's Ralph Waldo Emerson. Garnett's Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's Journals. BURLY dozing humblebee! Where thou art is clime for me. Far-off heats through seas to seek, I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid zone! 1 This poem is used by permission of, and arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Com authorized publishers of Emerson's works. pany, 2 Porto Rico. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze, Silvers the horizon wall, And, with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And, infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, Hot midsummer's petted crone, 1 One who luxuriates in, thoroughly enjoys, June. |