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MODEL

FOURTH READER,

IN TWO PARTS,

FOR INTERMEDIATE AND HIGHER GRADES.

BY

J. RUSSELL WEBB,

AUTHOR OF NORMAL READERS, ANALYTICAL FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD
READERS, WORD METHOD, ETC. ETC.

CHICAGO:

GEO. SHERWOOD & 00.

PREFACE.

THIS book completes the Model Series of Readers. It is not designed to be, in the technical sense, a work on Elocution, but a Reader for the intermediate and higher classes in public schools. Its selections cover a very wide range both in grade and variety, and furnish abundant means for thorough elocutionary training. It is more than a mere Reader. It is designed also to help train and mold the children into intelligent, earnest, noble men and women. It recognizes that, primarily, objects (in the broadest sense of the term) suggest ideas; that ideas suggest thoughts, which are hid away in the soul, and largely constitute the man. "As a man thinketh, so is he." Every man manifests himself through words; acts are but words.

Words are thought-shells. Each man, for himself, freights and sends them forth into the world: may be, to scatter good seed on good soil, there to root and gather to themselves other elements, and thus as living THINGs to develop and grow till they fill and beautify the world; may be, to scatter bad seed, which shall develop into the deadly Upas and transform the natural beauty into living death, or, it may be, to scatter no seed, to fall harmless, to lie unbroken, with "contents unknown," as dead weights-as useless incumbrances.

Every man's soul is a reservoir more or less filled with seeds, which he sows broadcast on the fruitful soil of childhood-the good, or the bad, as his own heart shall prompt, or his indifference allow. But every man sows - must sow. The seed sown, the effect produced, depend on the sower, and he, himself, largely, almost wholly, depends on, or rather is made up of, the influences which surrounded him during his own growth. This is the natural law of development, and its truth has been reduced to a precept having the authority of a command, to wit: "Train up a child in the way he should go." To this command is added, as a hope anchor to hold to persevering obedience, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." On this law rest the hopes-the fears-of the world. Be the training what it may-good or bad-the law is unchangeable - the result is sure.

To develop a noble man or woman, noble patterns must be given to love and follow, correct teachings to guide, and sweet influences to mold. The sceptered king is not to be the monarch of the next generation — the ruler of the centuries to come, but the teacher of to-day. What power, what responsibility, what hope, is his!

Impressed with these truths, I have here sought to instill into the minds and hearts of the children love of kindred, home and country; to expand that love till it shall not only recognize a common humanity in man, but a common right to sympathy and kindness of every thing that hath breath; that the crawling worm, even, as well as our neighbor, has rights that we are bound to respect; and thus I have endeavored to reverse the rule that man's inhumanity makes countless creatures mourn. With scarcely an exception, each selection has a distinct object to accomplish a lesson in science, facts, sentiments or morals, to teach. In these lessons I have sought to instruct, to inspire, to capacitate, to mold — in short, to develop the children into noble men and women, who, themselves, acting as centers of influence, shall hereafter mold others, who in their turn shall aid in the work of human regeneration, and in restoring to man his original likeness, which, when God saw, Behold, it was VERY GOOD."

And thus I have sought to help the teacher govern the world.
CHICAGO, February 29, 1876.

J. RUSSELL WEBB.

Copyright, 1876, by GEо. SHERWOOD & Co.

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