BY
WILLIAM H. ELSON
AUTHOR ELSON READERS AND GOOD ENGLISH SERIES
AND
CHRISTINE M. KECK
HEAD UNION JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH, GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
CHICAGO ATLANTA NEW YORK
Copyright 1919
By Scott, Foresman and Company
For permission to use copyrighted material gratefulacknowledgment is made to The London Times for “TheGuards Came Through” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; toThomas Hardy for “Men Who March Away” from TheLondon Times; to John Galsworthy for “England toFree Men” from The Westminster Gazette; to JohnMasefield for “Spanish Waters”; to Hamlin Garland for“The Great Blizzard” from Boy Life on the Prairie; toDoubleday Page & Co. for “The Gift of the Magi” byO. Henry; to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for “Old Ephraim, theGrizzly Bear,” from The Wilderness Hunter by TheodoreRoosevelt; to the George H. Doran Company for “Trees”from Trees and Other Poems by Joyce Kilmer; to Mr.R. W. Lillard for “America’s Answer” from The NewYork Evening Post; to Horace Traubel for “Pioneers!O Pioneers!”, “I Hear America Singing”, “O Captain!My Captain!” by Walt Whitman; to Charles Scribner’sSons for “On a Florida River” by Sidney Lanier, fromThe Lanier Book, copyright 1904; and to Frederick A.Stokes Company for “Kilmeny—A Song of theTrawlers” by Alfred Noyes from The New Morning,copyright 1919.
ROBERT O. LAW COMPANY
EDITION BOOK MANUFACTURERS
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
The Junior High School offers exceptional opportunity for relatingliterature to life. In addition to the aesthetic and ethicalpurposes, long recognized in the study of literature, the WorldWar emphasized the need for an extension of aims to include theteaching of certain fundamental American ideals. To marshal theavailable material, setting it to work in the service of social andcivic ideals, is to give to literature the “central place in a newhumanism.” When we organize reading in the schools with referenceto the teaching of ideals—personal, social, national, andpatriotic—we “put the stress on literature as one of the chiefmeans through which the child enters on his intellectual and spiritualinheritance.” Outstanding among these ideals are: freedom,love of home and country, service, loyalty, courage, thrift, humanetreatment of animals, a sense of humor, love of Nature, and anappreciation of the dignity of honest work. In a word, to providea course in the history and development of civilization,particularly stressing America’s part in it, is the present-daydemand on the school.
The Junior High School Literature Series, of which the presentvolume is intended for use in the first year, provides such acourse. The literature brought together in this book is organizedwith reference to the social ideal. Nature in its variedrelations to human life, particularly child life, is presented instories and poems of animals, birds, flowers, trees, and winter, allabounding in beauty and charm. Interest in Nature leads to interestin the deeds of men filled with the spirit of adventure. Theheroism of brave men and women from the age of chivalry tothe days of self-sacrific