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used only to lead to an appreciation of his best writing and his noblest traits of character. In general, the biography may well be left until after one or two of the author's best poems have been read or studied, and some desire to know about the author has been created. In the following pages, we have placed the biography first in order to preserve due logical order. We would, however, advise passing it over until some of the selections have been studied. This need not be done with such authors as Longfellow, Whittier and others who have been familiar to the pupils ever since they entered the Second Primary.

We know that if the directions in the following pages are carefully followed the literature work will be a success, for we have faithfully tested them in class work. We would here place special emphasis on the value of memorizing choice portions in order that the mind may have, stored away, pictures that may at pleasure be called up to refresh and entertain.

Ask parents and pupils to aid in helping to put the best books in the school library. There are many ways in which you can raise library funds. Every school should have the complete poems of Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, and other poets mentioned in the following pages; they should also have the masterpieces from Irving, Hawthorne, Dickens, Scott, and other writers. Where it is impossible to have all these, a careful search of the neighborhood will probably bring to light the books necessary to follow the course in literature which we have marked out. We believe no teacher will need to omit any part of the work because he can not find the necessary material. We have tried to overcome this difficulty by giving as

many selections as possible from the various authors, and we believe the teacher can readily supplement our list with good selections from old school readers, etc. In studying the various authors, encourage the pupils to bring in good anecdotes about them. Old files of the Youth's Companion will yield an abundance of these.

Urge each pupil to start a library of his own, adding choice books as he can. Teach them to feel that: "There is nothing so unhomelike as a bookless home, unless it is a house whose books betray a vulgar and narrow conception of life. A man's books form an average portrait of himself. Without books, a merchant's palace becomes but a prison, the 'trail of the upholsterer is over it all,' while a small library well-selected may, like Alladin's lamp, turn the abode of poverty to a princely home."

As a final hint, we wish to again urge that the principal objects to be gained by literature study should be kept continually in the mind of the teacher, viz.: "to fill the pupil's mind with a love for the good, the true, the beautiful, in literature, and so train his mind that he can discriminate between the good and the bad, the true and the false, that he will naturally reject all that is worthless and seize upon the lovely and the pure.

It is from the men and women bred on American soil that the fittest words come for the enrichment of American youth. I believe heartily in the advantage of enlarging one's horizon by taking in other climes and other ages, but first let us make sure of the great expansive power which lies close at hand. I am sure there never was a time or country when national education, under the guidance of national art and thought, was so possible as in America today." -Scudder.

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Great books are the great souls which have left the bodies of great beings and have come to talk with us. You have never seen Homer or Virgil or Dante or Mrs. Browning, but in their words their souls have come to you in the morning and at night. You can live with these illustrious ones and thus possess the never failing sources of a great happiness.-Prof. Swing.

My object throughout the class-room study of English literature would be to cultivate an intelligent appreciation, a positive love, for those treasures of genius, those masterpieces of literary art, which are embodied in our mother tongue; such a love as would be a delight, a sustaining, comforting, resiraining influence throughout life.-Gilmore

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