Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools | Page 3

say, be treated as a privilege and not as a mechanical task. The possibilities of this work will be increased if the teacher familiarizes herself with the material in the collateral lists, so that she can adapt the home readings to the tastes of the class and of specific pupils. The miscellaneous lists given at the close of the book are intended to supplement the lists accompanying the selections, and to offer some assistance in the choice of books for a high school library.
M.A.
NEW YORK, February, 1914.
CONTENTS
A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S F. Hopkinson Smith
QUITE SO Thomas Bailey Aldrich?(In Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories)
PAN IN WALL STREET Edmund Clarence Stedman
THE HAND OF LINCOLN Edmund Clarence Stedman
JEAN VALJEAN Augusta Stevenson?(In A Dramatic Reader, Book Five)
A COMBAT ON THE SANDS Mary Johnston?(From To Have and to Hold, Chapters XXI and XXII)
THE GRASSHOPPER Edith M. Thomas
MOLY Edith M. Thomas
THE PROMISED LAND Mary Antin?(From Chapter IX of The Promised Land)
WARBLE FOR LILAC-TIME Walt Whitman
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER Walt Whitman
VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD ONE NIGHT Walt Whitman
ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA Translated by George Herbert Palmer
ODYSSEUS George Cabot Lodge
A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE William Dean Howells?(In Suburban Sketches)
THE WILD RIDE Louise Imogen Guiney
CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS Dallas Lore Sharp?(In The Lay of the Land)
GLOUCESTER MOORS William Vaughn Moody
ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START William Vaughn Moody
ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILLIPINES William Vaughn Moody
THE COON DOG Sarah Orne Jewett?(In The Queen's Twin, and Other Stories)
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Richard Watson Gilder
A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS John Muir?(From Our National Parks)
WAITING John Burroughs
THE PONT DU GARD Henry James?(Chapter XXVI of A Little Tour in France)
THE YOUNGEST SON OF HIS FATHER'S HOUSE Anna Hempstead Branch
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER Bret Harte
THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY Woodrow Wilson?(In Mere Literature)
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING Charles Dudley Warner?(From My Summer in a Garden)
THE SINGING MAN Josephine Preston Peabody
THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI Lafcadio Hearn?(From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume I, Chapter VI)
LETTERS:
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS?(From The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich by Ferris Greenslet)
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO E.S. MORSE?(By permission of Professor Morse)
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY TO JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY?(From Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody)
BRET HARTE TO HIS WIFE?(From The Life of Bret Harte by Henry C. Merwin)
LAFCADIO HEARN TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN?(From Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn)
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS?(From Letters of Charles Eliot Norton)
EXERCISES IN DRAMATIC COMPOSITION
MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING
MODERN PROSE AND POETRY FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
It is the most delightful of French inns, in the quaintest of French settlements. As you rush by in one of the innumerable trains that pass it daily, you may catch glimpses of tall trees trailing their branches in the still stream,--hardly a dozen yards wide,--of flocks of white ducks paddling together, and of queer punts drawn up on the shelving shore or tied to soggy, patched-up landing-stairs.
If the sun shines, you can see, now and then, between the trees, a figure kneeling at the water's edge, bending over a pile of clothes, washing,--her head bound with a red handkerchief.
If you are quick, the miniature river will open just before you round the curve, disclosing in the distance groups of willows, and a rickety foot-bridge perched up on poles to keep it dry. All this you see in a flash.
But you must stop at the old-fashioned station, within ten minutes of the Harlem River, cross the road, skirt an old garden bound with a fence and bursting with flowers, and so pass on through a bare field to the water's edge, before you catch sight of the cosy little houses lining the banks, with garden fences cutting into the water, the arbors covered with tangled vines, and the boats crossing back and forth.
I have a love for the out-of-the-way places of the earth when they bristle all over with the quaint and the old and the odd, and are mouldy with the picturesque. But here is an in-the-way place, all sunshine and shimmer, with never a fringe of mould upon it, and yet you lose your heart at a glance. It is as charming in its boat life as an old Holland canal; it is as delightful in its shore life as the Seine; and it is as picturesque and entrancing in its sylvan beauty as the most exquisite of English streams.
The thousands of workaday souls who pass this spot daily in their whirl out and in the great city may catch all these glimpses of shade and sunlight over the edges of their journals, and any one of them living near the city's centre, with a stout pair of legs in his knickerbockers and the breath of the morning in his heart, can reach it afoot any day before breakfast; and yet not one in a hundred knows that this