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JOURNEYS THROUGH BOOKLAND
A New and Original
Plan for Reading Applied to the
World's Best Literature
for Children
by
CHARLES H. SYLVESTER
Author of English and American Literature
VOLUME TEN--THE GUIDE
New Edition
For parents, teachers, and all who have
children under their charge; for adults
who wish to renew their acquaintance
with the friends of their youth, or to
open for the first time the world's great
treasure house of literature; for youthful
readers who must study the classics
[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
WASHINGTON IRVING
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT]
Chicago
Bellows-Reeve Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1922
Bellows-Reeve Company
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. JOURNEYS THROUGH BOOKLAND--ITS CONTENTS AND PLAN 7
The Masterpieces 9
Arrangement and Grading 10
The Studies and Helps 13
Studies 15
Notes 15
Introductory Notes 15
Biographies 16
Pronouncing Vocabularies 16
Pictures 17
Tables of Contents 17
Index 17
The Nursery Rhymes 18
Discussion of each Volume 24
Volume One 24
Volume Two 26
Volume Three 28
Volume Four 29
Volume Five 29
Volume Six 30
Volume Seven 31
Volume Eight 33
Volume Nine 34
Volume Ten--The Guide 35
III. PICTURES AND THEIR USE 36
What Should We Notice in a Picture? 36
Line 36
Light and Shade 37
Tone and Color 39
Composition 39
Atmosphere and Perspective 40
Application of Principles 41
_Bob and Tiny Tim_ 41
Pictures and Their Value in Literature 44
On the Use of Pictures in _Journeys_ 48
_Nursery Rhymes_ 51
_Jack and the Beanstalk_ 52
_Nurse Helps Me when I Embark_ 52
_Wynken, Blynken, and Nod_ 53
_Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks_ 54
_Tom and the Dragon Fly_ 55
_The Swallow and the Stork Came_ 55
_Down Tumbled Wheelbarrow_ 58
_Geraint Hears Enid Singing_ 60
IV. TELLING STORIES 63
_The Fairies of the Caldon-Low_ 68
_Little Giffin of Tennessee_ 71
_The Ballad of Agincourt_ 74
_Hervé Riel_ 78
V. READING, AND THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER 85
_Who Stole the Bird's Nest?_ 95
_Lead, Kindly Light_ 98
_Poor Richard's Almanac_ 101
VI. FATHER AND SON 107
VII. MEMORIZING 128
One Hundred Choice Quotations 131
VIII. HOW TO READ FICTION 143
Different Kinds of Literature 143
Reading Stories 145
Plot 149
_Cinderella_ 150
Persons 156
_The Hardy Tin Soldier_ 158
The Scenes 162
_The Dog and His Shadow_ 164
_The Fox and the Stork_ 166
_A Christmas Carol_ 168
The Lesson and the Author's Purpose 170
_The Fir Tree_ 173
The Method and Style of the Author 174
Emotional Power 176
_Rab and His Friends_ 177
General Principles and Reflections 181
Completed Studies 185
_The Hare and the Tortoise_ 185
_The Fox and the Crow_ 187
_The Drummer_ 193
_Tom, the Water Baby_ 198
_The Passing of Arthur_ 214
IX. CLOSE READING OR STUDY 224
_Rab and His Friends_ 225
_Braddock's Defeat_ 227
_Industry and Sloth_ 229
_Why the Sea is Salt_ 231
_Faithless Sally Brown_ 232
_The Definition of a Gentleman_ 234
_Adventures in Lilliput_ 235
_The Heart of Bruce_ 238
_Annie Laurie_ 243
_The Lost Child_ 243
_David Crockett in the Creek War_ 244
_The Impeachment of Warren Hastings_ 248
From _The Death of Cæsar_ 253
X. CLOSE READING (Concluded) 256
The Author 257
Sentences 258
Figures of Speech 259
Allusions 259
Basis of Figures 262
Simile 263
Metaphor 264
Synecdoche and Metonymy 265
Apostrophe and Personification 266
Studies in Figures 268
_Ode to a Skylark_ 268
_A Visit from Saint Nicholas_ 270
_The First Snowfall_ 270
XI. READING POETRY 272
_The Reaper and the Flowers_ 272
_The Brown Thrush_ 276
_The Child's World_ 277
_Seven Times One_ 278
_The First Snowfall_ 281
_The Potato_ 285
_Origin of the Opal_ 285
_The Barefoot Boy_ 286
_The Bugle Song_ 287
_The Petrified Fern_ 291
_The Forsaken Merman_ 295
_The Cloud_ 301
_Ode to a Skylark_ 306
XII. READING ALOUD 311
Articulation and Enunciation 311
Emphasis and Inflection 312
Emotional States 312
Pitch 312
Rate or Time 313
Quality 315
Force 315
XIII. LITERATURE AND ITS FORMS 317
Prose 318
Methods of Expression 318
Narration 318
Description 321
Exposition 321
Argumentation 322
Forms of Prose 322
Fiction 322
Essays 322
Orations 324
Drama 325
Poetry 327
Structure of Poetry 328
Rhythm 328
Rhyme 329
Alliteration 330
Kinds of Poetry 331
Epic 331
Lyric 333
Songs 333
Ode 335
Elegy 335
Sonnet 337
_Victor and Vanquished_ 338
Dramatic 339
Miracle Plays 340
Morality Plays 340
Masques 341
Tragedies and Comedies 341
XIV. JOURNEYS IN ITS RELATION TO THE SCHOOL--READING AND
LANGUAGE 345
Reading 348
Language 349
Oral Lessons 352
_The Wind and the Sun_ 357
Written Lessons 360
Introduction 360
Literature in Written Lessons 363
Narration 363
_Robin Hood and the Stranger_ 363
Description 365
_The King of the Golden River_ 366
Exposition 368
_Cid Campeador_ 368
Argument 370
_The Boston Massacre_ 370
Conclusion 376
_An Exciting Canoe Race_ 376
XV. JOURNEYS IN ITS RELATION TO THE SCHOOL--NATURE STUDY 380
Seven Long Selections 381
_Tom, the Water Baby_ 381
_Robinson Crusoe_ 382
_The Swiss Family Robinson_ 382
_Brute Neighbors_ 383
_The Pond in Winter_ 384
_Winter Animals_ 384
_Trees and Ants that Help Each Other_ 385
Classified Selections 386
Flowers and Plant Life 386
Birds 387
Four-footed Animals 389
Reptiles 391
Insects 391
Denizens of the Water 391
Natural Phenomena 392
Geography in Nature 392
Complete Study 393
_The King of the Golden River_ 393
XVI. JOURNEYS IN ITS RELATION TO THE SCHOOL--GEOGRAPHY AND
HISTORY 400
Classified References 402
Model Geography Lesson 411
The Wind 411
Model History Lessons 413
Alfred the Great 413
Burgoyne's Campaign 419
XVII. JOURNEYS IN ITS RELATION TO THE HIGH SCHOOL 425
Classification of Studies 427
Type Studies 431
XVIII. RECITATIONS AND SPECIAL DAYS IN SCHOOL 436
Bird Day 437
Memorial Day 438
Christmas 438
Birthdays 438
Dramatization 439
An Old-Fashioned Afternoon 440
XIX. HANDY LIST OF THE STUDIES IN JOURNEYS THROUGH BOOKLAND 441
Volume One 442
Volume Two 443
Volume Three 445
Volume Four 446
Volume Five 446
Volume Six 447
Volume Seven 448
Volume Eight 449
Volume Nine 449
XX. SUPPLEMENTARY BOOK LISTS 451
For the Separate Volumes 454
Volume One 454
Volume Two 455
Volume Three 457
Volume Four 458
Volume Five 459
Volume Six 460
Volume Seven 461
Classified Lists 462
Fiction 463
Poetry and Drama 464
Essays 464
Nature 465
Biography 465
History 465
Travel and Geography 466
Miscellaneous 466
APPENDIX--
Handy Table of English Writers 469
Handy Table of American Writers 473
GENERAL INDEX 475
ILLUSTRATIONS
HALFTONE PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS
PAGE
GROUP ONE Frontispiece
_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_
_Oliver Wendell Holmes_
_Nathaniel Hawthorne_
_Washington Irving_
_John Greenleaf Whittier_
_James Russell Lowell_
_William Cullen Bryant_
GROUP TWO 52
_William Shakespeare_
_Alfred, Lord Tennyson_
_Robert Browning_
_Sir Walter Scott_
_William Wordsworth_
_Geoffrey Chaucer_
_Joseph Addison_
GROUP THREE 100
_Cardinal Newman_
_Sir Francis Bacon_
_Jonathan Swift_
_Daniel Defoe_
_Cardinal Wiseman_
_Cervantes_
_Father Ryan_
GROUP FOUR 148
_Julia Ward Howe_
_Benjamin Franklin_
_Henry David Thoreau_
_Patrick Henry_
_William H. Prescott_
_Francis Parkman_
_James Fenimore Cooper_
GROUP FIVE 198
_Edgar Allan Poe_
_Donald G. Mitchell_
_James Whitcomb Riley_
_Thomas Buchanan Read_
_Eugene Field_
_John Howard Payne_
_John G. Saxe_
GROUP SIX 246
_Elizabeth Barrett Browning_
_Phoebe Cary_
_Alice Cary_
_Lucy Larcom_
_Felicia Hemans_
_George Eliot_
_Jean Ingelow_
GROUP SEVEN 294
_Robert Burns_
_Robert Southey_
_William Cowper_
_Lord Byron_
_John Keats_
_Percy Bysshe Shelley_
_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
GROUP EIGHT 342
_Rudyard Kipling_
_Robert Louis Stevenson_
_Paul Du Chaillu_
_Thomas Hughes_
_Hans Christian Andersen_
_Jakob Grimm_
_Wilhelm Grimm_
GROUP NINE 400
_John Ruskin_
_Oliver Goldsmith_
_Matthew Arnold_
_Thomas Babington Macaulay_
_John Bunyan_
_Thomas De Quincey_
_Charles Lamb_
GROUP TEN 454
_John Tyndall_
_Charles Kingsley_
_Thomas Moore_
_Alexander Pope_
_Thomas Campbell_
_David Livingstone_
_George MacDonald_
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Everyone who associates with children becomes deeply interested in them.
Their helplessness during their early years appeals warmly to sympathy;
their acute desire to learn and their responsiveness to suggestion make
teaching a delight; their loyalty and devotion warm the heart and
inspire the wish to do the things that count for most. Everything
combines to increase a sense of responsibility and to make the elders
active in bringing to bear those influences that make for character,
power and success.
Every worthy teacher in every school gives more than her salary commands
and puts heart power into every act. By example and precept the lessons
are taught and growth follows in response to cultivation. But the
schools are handicapped by lack of time for much personal care, by lack
of facilities for the best of instruction and by the multiplicity of
things that must be done. Under the best conditions a teacher has but a
small part of a child's time and then instruction must be given usually
to classes and not to individuals. Outside of school for a considerable
time each day the child falls under the influence of playmates who may
or may not be helpful, but the greater part of every twenty-four hours
belongs to the home.
Parents, guardians, brothers and sisters, servants, consciously or
unconsciously, wisely or unwisely, are teaching all the time. It is from
this great complex of influences that every child builds his character
and lays the foundation of whatever success he afterwards achieves.
Undoubtedly the home is the greatest single influence and that is
strongest during the early years. Before a boy is seven the elements of
his character begin to form; by the time he is fourteen his future
usually can be predicted, and after he is twenty, few real changes are
brought about in the character of the man. The schools can do little
more than plant the seeds of culture; in the family must the young
plants be watered, nourished and trained. Then will the growth be
symmetrical and beautiful.
When the school and the home work together, when parents and teacher are
in hearty sympathy, the great work is easily accomplished. But this
harmony in interest is difficult to secure. In the first place it is not
possible frequently for parents and teachers to become acquainted;
usually is it impossible for them to know one another intimately. Here
there are two forces, each ignorant of the other, but both trying for a
common end. Again, parents in many, many instances are not acquainted
with the schools nor with the methods of instruction which are followed
therein. What is done by one may be undone by the other. If there could
be a common ground of meeting, much labor would be saved and greater
harmony of effort established.
When fathers and mothers are willing to take time enough from their
other duties to show that sympathetic interest in juvenile tasks which
is the greatest stimulus to intelligent effort, when they wish to know
what work each child is doing and where in each text book his lessons
are, when the multiplication table and the story of Cinderella are of as
much importance as the price of meat or the profit on a yard of silk,
then will the parents and the teachers come together in whatever field
appears mutually acceptable.
Everybody reads, and reading is now the greatest single influence upon
humanity. The day of the orator has passed, the day of print has long
been upon us. No adult remains long uninfluenced by what he reads
persistently, and every child receives more impressions from his reading
than from all other sources put together.
Someone has shown forcibly by a graphic diagram the ideas we are most
anxious to establish. In this diagram of _Forces in Education_, the
circle represents the sum total of all those influences which tend to
make the mind and character of the growing child. That half of the
circle to the right of the heavy line represents the forces of the
school; the half to the left, the forces that come into play outside the
teacher's domain. In school are the various studies taught; reading,
writing, language, nature, geography, history, arithmetic. Other things
such as morals, manners, hygiene, etc., come in for their share of force
in the division "Miscellaneous." Out of school the child's work
influences him; his playmates affect him more; the example and
instruction of his parents form his habits, thought and character to a
still greater extent; but more than any one, as much as the three
combined, does his home reading shape his destiny.
[Illustration]
That this last statement is no exaggeration is proved by the testimony
of many a wise and thoughtful man, by the observation of teachers
everywhere. When a child has learned to read, he possesses the
instrument of highest culture, but at the same time the instrument of
greater danger. Bad books or bad methods of reading good books lead the
reader's mind astray or stimulate a destructive imagination that affects
character forever; but good books and right methods of reading make the
soul sensitive to right and wrong, improve the mind, inspire to higher
ideals and lead to loftier effort.
Here is the one fertile field wherein teacher, parent and every other
person interested in the welfare of children and youth may meet and work
together in the noblest cause God ever gave us the grace to see.
"I have a notion," said Benjamin Harrison, "that children are about the
only people we can do anything for. When we get to be men and women we
are either spoiled or improved. The work is done." One of the best
things we can do is to create a taste for good reading and cultivate a
habit of reading in the right manner. It is an easy and a delightful
task.
How many parents do it? Let them live with their children in the realm
the little ones love. Let them read the fairy tales, the myths, the
stories, the history that childhood appreciates, not in a spirit of
criticism or in the role of a dictator but as a child of a little larger
growth, a man or woman with a youthful mind.
How many teachers assist? By so teaching that reading becomes an
inspiration in itself; that only mastery contents; that beauty, high
sentiment, lofty ideals may be found and followed; by making the reading
recitation the one delightful hour of the day.
If any mature person at home can spend each week a few hours in reading
and talking with the children about what has been read he will be
surprised to find how lightly the time passes and how quickly his own
cares and anxieties are dissipated. He will find greater delight than he
has ever known in the society of his equals; and the younger ones, whose
minds glow with helpful curiosity and absorbing interest will be kept
to that extent from the street and its attractions, while at the same
time they are learning those things that count for most in life's great
battle.
Let no one feel in the least uncertain of his power to interest and
delight. Let him have no hesitation in joining in with the children, in
meeting them on their level and in sharing thought and feeling with
them. By being a child himself he most easily makes of himself a wise
and inspiring leader.