LITERATURE A FOUR YEARS' COURSE FOR SECONDARY BY MARTHA HALE SHACKFORD, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, WELLESLEY COLLEGE AND MARGARET JUDSON, A.B., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, VASSAR COLLEGE PREFACE I. THIS book is based upon the belief that a human being learns by imitation, by repetition, and by challenge to increased exertion. II. It includes an abundance of carefully chosen extracts: 1. To be studied closely under a teacher's guidance. 2. To be copied, verbatim, in order to gain practical acquaintance with good models which will teach punctuation, spelling, diction, sentence-structure, and development of thought. 3. To be enjoyed for subject-matter and style, to suggest further reading in the same book, to broaden interests, and to stimulate thought along new lines. III. It follows a special arrangement in presenting the subjects: Narration, Description, Exposition, and Argumentation, for 1. A return to a subject, after a pause, gives new zest and a new point of view. 2. Practice in other subjects is essential before a student can get proper perspective regarding narration, etc. A student must realize that these four "forms of discourse" are really vitally related, not completely isolated. 3. Repetition is one of the most effective means of fixing in the mind necessary principles and facts. IV. Oral composition is included under frequent class exercises but no special effort is made to substitute practice in elocution for training in the individual formulation and expression of ideas. Glibness in oratory is a danger in America; we need training in thought. V. The amount of material included is greater than in the average text-book in this subject. Not only comprehensive treatment of rhetorical matter but also chapters relating to the study of literature are found. VI. The subject is presented in the belief that what students need is not novelty and intellectual vaudeville, but sustained effort and the discipline which seeks to teach future citizens how to read appreciatively, how to think clearly, and how to express their ideas vividly, rationally, and with straightforward directness. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are due to the following publishers, who have most courteously and generously given permission to reprint brief extracts from works which are copyrighted: the Houghton Mifflin Company, for quotations from the works of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Story, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, John Muir, Bret Harte, Parton, Mr. Howells, Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Perry, Miss Margaret Sherwood, Mr. Philip S. Marden, Charles C. Jones, Miss Elizabeth K. Kendall, Mr. Clarence G. Child; Charles Scribner's Sons, for quotations from Stevenson, Meredith, Mr. Galsworthy, and from Scribner's Magazine; Ginn and Company, for quotations from Mr. Gayley's Classic Myths, and Messrs. Cook and Tinker's Select Translations from Old English Poetry; Henry Holt and Company, for quotations from Freeman's Universal History, and Miss Billings' Middle English Metrical Romances; D. Appleton and Company, for quotations from Le Conte's Geology; The Century Company, for quotations from Mr. Kipling's The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, from Thackeray's Letters to an American Family, John Muir's The Mountains of California; Harper and Brothers, for quotations from Green's Short History of the English People, Motley's Life and Letters, Mrs. Deland's Old Chester Tales and The Iron Woman, Mr. Woodberry's America in Literature, and several paragraphs from The North American Review; Dodd, Mead and Company, for a quotation from Bermuda, Past and Present, and from L |