808.1 H3 22988 Vi cop 7 NOTE Acknowledgment is hereby made to the publishers of the various poems included in this compilation. The poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Phoebe Cary, Alice Cary, Celia Thaxter, and Lucy Larcom are published by arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The poems by William Cullen Bryant are published by arrangement with D. Appleton & Co. Those by Robert Louis Stevenson and Eugene Field are included by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. PREFACE THESE little books are dedicated to the most useful body of people in the world, the teachers. They are sent forth in the hope that they may at least “push a pound," and by so much lighten the burden of some soul toiling for the children. A very general and eminently proper demand of courses of study is for the use of much literature, especially poems, in all the grades, and teachers often experience great difficulty in finding appropriate material that has not been already studied in some lower grades. The kindergartners and the teachers of the earlier primary grades cull the available literature and often leave little for the teacher of the higher grades, with which she is familiar. Hence results much repetition and consequent loss of interest. Sometimes, too, it is to be feared that teachers in their desperation use selections that cannot properly be called good literature. The compilers of these books have endeavored to help over these hard places by supplying, in the first place, an abundance of material, all good and from standard authors, and, in the second place, by grading it, giving to each grade more than can possibly be used, and thus removing viii PREFACE the temptation to take what is better adapted to some other grade. Features of the books also are the selections for the different seasons and for special occasions and the briefer quotations for memorizing. The books are the product of experience. If they increase the joys of teaching for any teacher, they will have paid for the making. |