Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading | Page 2

Parnassus those of some living Americans and Englishmen. He does not pretend that he has made an exhaustive collection, but he hopes the book may be regarded as the nucleus for an anthology which cannot, in the nature of things, be very large.
The prose, as already intimated, is confined to groups of proverbs and familiar sayings. In one aspect these single lines of prose present difficulties to the young reader: they are condensed forms of expression, even though the words may be simple; but they offer the convenient small change of intellectual currency which it is well for one to be supplied with at an early stage of one's journey, and they afford to the teacher a capital opportunity for conversational and other exercises.
The order of this book is in a general way from the easy to the more difficult, with an attempt, also, at an agreeable variety. The editor has purposely avoided breaking up the book into lesson portions or giving it the air of a text-book. There is no reason why children should not read books as older people read them, for pleasure, and dissociate them from a too persistent notion of tasks. It is entirely possible that some teachers may find it out of the question to lead their classes straight through this book, but there is nothing to forbid them from judicious skipping, or, what is perhaps more to the point, from helping pupils over a difficult word or phrase when it is encountered; the interest which the child takes will carry him over most hard places. It would be a capital use of the book also if teachers were to draw upon it for poems which their pupils should, in the suggestive phrase, learn by heart. To this purpose the contents are singularly well adapted; for, from the single line proverb to a poem by Wordsworth, there is such a wide range of choice that the teacher need not resort to the questionable device of giving children fragments and bits of verse and prose to commit to memory. One of the greatest services we can do the young mind is to accustom it to the perception of wholes, and whether this whole be a lyric or a narrative poem like Evangeline, it is almost equally important that the young reader should learn to hold it as such in his mind. To treat a poem as a mere quarry out of which a particularly smooth stone can be chipped is to misinterpret poetry. A poem is a statue, not a quarry.
H.E.S.
BOSTON, October, 1893.
CONTENTS.
ALPHABET Mother Goose
A DEWDROP Frank Dempster Sherman
BEES Frank Dempster Sherman
RHYMES.?Baa, baa, black sheep?Bless you, bless you, burnie bee?Bow, wow, wow?Bye, baby bunting Mother Goose
STAR LIGHT Unknown
THE LITTLE MOON A.B. White
TO A HONEY-BEE Alice Gary
RHYMES.?A cat came fiddling?A dillar, a dollar?As I was going to St. Ives?As I was going up Pippen Hill?A swarm of bees in May Mother Goose
PROVERBS AND POPULAR SAYINGS
NONSENSE ALPHABET Edward Lear
THE EGG IN THE NEST Unknown
RHYMES?Hey! diddle diddle?Pussy sits beside the fire?Ding dong bell Mother Goose
DAISIES Frank Dempster Sherman
SPINNING TOP Frank Dempster Sherman
PROVERBS AND POPULAR SAYINGS
RHYMES.?Bobby Shafto's gone to sea?Every lady in this land?Great A, little a?Hark, hark?Sing a song of sixpence?Hickory, dickory dock?Hot-cross buns!?How does my lady's garden grow??Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall?Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top?Some little mice sat in a barn to spin?If all the world were apple-pie?If wishes were horses
I have a little sister Mother Goose
WHO STOLE THE BIRD'S NEST? Lydia Maria Child
RHYMES.?I saw a ship a-sailing?Jack and Jill went up the hill?Little Bo-peep?Little boy blue?Little girl, little girl?Little Jack Horner sat in the corner?Little Johnny Pringle had a little pig?Little Miss Muffet?There was a little man?Little Tommy Tacker Mother Goose PROVERBS AND POPULAR SAYINGS
HAPPY THOUGHT Robert Louis Stevenson
THE SUN'S TRAVELS Robert Louis Stevenson
MY BED IS A BOAT Robert Louis Stevenson
THE SWING Robert Louis Stevenson
RHYMES?Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?Mistress Mary, quite contrary?Old King Cole
Old Mother Hubbard Mother Goose
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