Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers | Page 6

selected
for future use. I have found in them few pages so hard as to require
over much study, or a too frequent use of the dictionary. John
Burroughs, more than almost any other writer of the time, has a
prevailing taste for simple words and simple constructions. "He that
runs may read" him. I have found many children under eleven years of
age who could read a whole page without hesitating. If I discover some
words which I foresee will cause difficulty, I place such on the
blackboard and rapidly pronounce and explain them before the reading.
Generally, however, I find the text the best interpreter of its words.
What follows explains what goes before, if the child is led to read on to
the end of the sentence. It is a mistake to allow children to be
frightened away from choice reading by an occasional hard word.
There is no better time than his reading lesson in which to teach a child
that the hard things of life are to be grappled with and overcome. A
mistake also, I think, is that toilsome process of explanation which I

sometimes find teachers following, under the impression that it will be
"parrot work" (as the stock phrase of the "institutes" has it) for the
pupils to read anything which they do not clearly and fully comprehend.
Teachers' definitions, in such cases, I have often noticed, are no better
than dictionary definitions, and surely everybody knows that few more
fruitless things than dictionary definitions are ever crammed into the
memory of a child. Better far give free play to the native intelligence of
the child, and trust it to apprehend, though it may not yet comprehend
nor be able to express its apprehension in definition. On this subject I
am glad to quote so high an authority as Sir Walter Scott: "Indeed I
rather suspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and
important kind from reading things which they do not comprehend, and
therefore that to write down to children's understanding is a mistake.
Set them on the scent and let them puzzle it out."
>From time to time I have allowed my pupils to give me written reports
from memory of these essays, and have often found these little
compositions sparkling with pleasing information, or full of that
childlike fun which is characteristic of the author. I have marked the
errors in these exercises, and have given them back to the children to
rewrite. Sometimes the second papers show careful correction-and
sometimes the mistakes are partially neglected. Very often the child
wishes to improve on the first composition, and so adds new blunders
as well as creates new interest.
There is a law of self-preservation in Nature, which takes care of
mistakes. Every human soul reaches toward the light in the most direct
path open to it, and will correct its own errors as soon as it is developed
far enough. There is no use in trying to force maturity; teachers who
trouble children beyond all reason, and worry over their mistakes, are
fumbling at the roots of young plants that will grow if they are let alone
long enough.
The average mechanical work (spelling, construction of sentences,
writing, etc.) is better under this method than when more time is
devoted to the mechanics and less to the thought of composition. I have
seen many reports of Burroughs's essays from the pens of children
more pleasing and reliable than the essays of some professional
reviewers; in these papers I often find the children adding little
suggestions of their own; as, "Do birds dream?" One of the girls says

her bird "jumps in its sleep." A little ten year old writes, "Weeds are
unuseful flowers," and, "I like this book because there are real things in
it." Another thinks she "will look more carefully " if she ever gets out
into the country again. For the development of close observation and
good feeling toward the common things of life, I know of no writings
better than those of John Burroughs.
MARY E. BURT
JONES SCHOOL, CHICAGO, Sept. 1, 1887.

BIRDS.
BIRD ENEMIES.
How surely the birds know their enemies! See how the wrens and
robins and bluebirds pursue and scold the cat, while they take little or
no notice of the dog! Even the swallow will fight the cat, and, relying
too confidently upon its powers of flight, sometimes swoops down so
near to its enemy that it is caught by a sudden stroke of the cat's paw.
The only case I know of in which our small birds fail to recognize their
enemy is furnished by the shrike; apparently the little birds do not
know that this modest-colored bird is an assassin. At least, I have never
seen them scold