Junior High School Literature, Book 1

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
                               LITERATURE

                                BOOK ONE

                                   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 grateful acknowledgment
  is made to _The London Times_ for “The Guards Came Through” by Sir
  Arthur Conan Doyle; to Thomas Hardy for “Men Who March Away” from
  _The London Times_; to John Galsworthy for “England to Free Men” from
  _The Westminster Gazette_; to John Masefield for “Spanish Waters”;
  to Hamlin Garland for “The Great Blizzard” from _Boy Life on the
  Prairie_; to Doubleday Page & Co. for “The Gift of the Magi” by O.
  Henry; to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for “Old Ephraim, the Grizzly Bear,”
  from _The Wilderness Hunter_ by Theodore Roosevelt; 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 New
  York Evening Post_; to Horace Traubel for “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”, “I
  Hear America Singing”, “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman; to
  Charles Scribner’s Sons for “On a Florida River” by Sidney Lanier,
  from _The Lanier Book_, copyright 1904; and to Frederick A. Stokes
  Company for “Kilmeny—A Song of the Trawlers” by Alfred Noyes from
  _The New Morning_, copyright 1919.

                          ROBERT O. LAW COMPANY
                       EDITION BOOK MANUFACTURERS
                            CHICAGO, U. S. A.




PREFACE


The Junior High School offers exceptional opportunity for relating
literature to life. In addition to the aesthetic and ethical purposes,
long recognized in the study of literature, the World War emphasized
the need for an extension of aims to include the teaching of certain
fundamental American ideals. To marshal the available material, setting
it to work in the service of social and civic ideals, is to give to
literature the “central place in a new humanism.” When we organize
reading in the schools with reference to the teaching of ideals—personal,
social, national, and patriotic—we “put the stress on literature as one
of the chief means through which the child enters on his intellectual and
spiritual inheritance.” Outstanding among these ideals are: freedom, love
of home and country, service, loyalty, courage, thrift, humane treatment
of animals, a sense of humor, love of Nature, and an appreciation of the
dignity of honest work. In a word, to provide a course in the history and
development of civilization, particularly stressing America’s part in it,
is the present-day demand on the school.

The Junior High School Literature Series, of which the present volume
is intended for use in the first year, provides such a course. The
literature brought together in this book is organized with reference
to the social ideal. Nature in its varied relations to human life,
particularly child life, is presented in stories and poems of animals,
birds, flowers, trees, and winter, all abounding in beauty and charm.
Interest in Nature leads to interest in the deeds of men filled with the
spirit of adventure. The heroism of brave men and women from the age of
chivalry to the days of self-sacrifice on Flanders Fields is told in
ballad and romance, thus stimulating qualities of courage, loyalty, and
devotion. Akin to these are the deeds of men who won freedom for their
fellows and gave meaning to the words, “our inheritance of freedom.”
Their heroism is told in story and song, from the time of the Great
Charter and Robert the Bruce to the Declaration of Independence and
the recent treaty of Versailles. The whole culminates in the literature
and life in the homeland, interpreting America’s part in these great
enterprises of the human spirit. Through legend and history the spirit
and thoughts of our developing nation are portrayed in a literature of
compelling interest, distinctively American.

This book supplies material in such generous quantity as to provide in
one volume a complete one-year course of literature. There is material
suited to all the purposes that a collection of literature for this grade
should supply: reading for the story element, silent reading, reading
for expression, intensive reading, memorizing, dramatization, public
reading and recitation, plot study, etc. Moreover, the book offers a
wide variety of literature, representing various types: ballads, lyrics,
short stories, tales, biographies, and the rest. The selections comprise
not only those that have stood the test of time, but also some of the
choicest treasures of the modern creative period.