Literature for Children

us, when thou comest bring with thee, and

Letter T

e ways and means by which good books may be brought into the life of a boy. For in the living out of the great story of securing shelter and food and raiment, the boy who has never felt the charm of a great book in chimney-corner days, or the man who has never pored over a "midnight darling" by candlelight, has missed one of the most refined and harmless pleasures of life. The very books themselves are refining because they make up the art of literature, an art that is in its highest sense an expression

follow. And besides, such an investigation, if it could be made, would be so out of fashion among schoolmasters at the present time that it might bring nothing but reproach on the one attempting it. The very convenient plan is to assume a certain educational specific as true and from that assumption to go straight to a favourable conclusion. In accordance with this fashion it seems the easiest way to take the privilege of the day and without more ado assume t

nature. The years of the elementary school seem to be the time in which cultivation is easiest and the one in which t

hed by the coarseness of former times. Many a present-day story makes the ordinary course of life seem uninteresting, a dangerous thing for a book to do, according to Ruskin. The conduct portrayed has in it too much of personal freedom arising out of caprice, breaking too much with traditional right through what a critic once designated as "debauching innuendo and ill favoured love." The book is often spectacular or sullen in tone. It may be melodramatic, leaving the reader rebellious or with a weakened sense of responsibility. Or aga

lace of sustained attention. This begets the mood for profligacy. Something new and good is expected to turn up in the shape of a book. In this mood there is nothing to inspire to steady purpose

nd, not criticism about it. If the teacher has real appreciation for a piece of literature, the boy will discern it in his face. Then the boy can be put on the right scent and left to trail it out for himself, as Scott long

xplaining the better. If there is a single thing that for the last dozen years has stood in the way of boys' and girls' appreciating good literature, it is the so-called laboratory method. Of all the quack educational specifics that have been advanced,

e; but by no means is it efficacious. The worthless book will continue to obtrude itself at all times and on all occasions. Then there are the reading habits of the community, the notions of par

re cut to the same pattern, they are always in evidence, and they are all equally stupid. The themes range from boarding school proprieties t

ly paper with headlines inviting attention

c supplement and even ask at the public library

n the child by the school reader as subject-mat

s are requested not to give fairy books to children. Such books are thought to be bad. The demand is for true books. Parents have not discovered the existence of the imagination and the part

real literature and that they ought to be suf

facts and point morals rather tha

stories of everyday life; boys turning to the

reading done at the

books and of the rere

actice of reading alo

good or bad; but it will be getting the interest and confidence of the child himself. When the teacher comes to consider that a boy naturally loves a hero, and like Tom Sawyer longs to "die temporarily," or that a girl is naturally curious to open the forbidden door of the closet as was Fatima, he cannot but see that