THE HILL READERS BY DANIEL HARVEY HILL AND FRANK LINCOLN STEVENS OF THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS AND CHARLES WILLIAM BURKETT OF THE KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE BOOK FOUR GINN & COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LONDON PREFACE School readers enter more deeply into the lives and characters of children than do the other books of the publicschool curriculum. What can ever drive from the mind the stories and the poems of childhood, or erase the impressions consciously or unconsciously drawn from them? The editors have striven to make this series of books worthy of their responsibility. The authors represented belong almost entirely to two classes: first, those who have won applause as writers for children; second, those who are members of the world's elect circle of writers. As far as is possible in readers, each selection is given in the very words of the author and in its literary entirety. To take advantage of the fact that the fourth-reader child is perhaps in his most expansive imaginative period, an unusually large number of new as well as classic myths and wonder stories have been incorporated in this book. As a large proportion of the school children of America live in the country, especial care has been taken to include a large and varied number of selections relating to rural life. These, it is hoped, will help to foster a love for nature and for the country home, open the eyes of children to the marvelous beauties around them, and bring them nearer the life that they are to lead. To help children attending schools in which there are few reference books, the biographical notes have been made fuller than in most readers. 3 The editors desire also to make thankful acknowledgments to publishers, private copyright holders, and to authors as follows: to The Outlook for the translation of Jean Aicard's story; to Dodd, Mead & Co. for Ian Maclaren's The Saving of Nestie; to D. Appleton & Co. for Bryant's Song of Marion's Men; to Little, Brown & Co. for Mrs. Preston's Chrimhilde's Treasures; to the Bloch Publishing Company for Dr. A. S. Isaac's translation from the Talmud; to the Syndics of the University Press, Cambridge, England, for the selection from the Jātaka; to the Century Company for Irwin Russell's Hope; to Ginn & Company for Dr. Long's Attacked by a Moose, and Frances Nimmo Greene's The Coming of Arthur; to William Hamilton Hayne for Paul Hamilton Hayne's The Meadow Brook; to Mrs. Leonora M. Ticknor for Dr. F. O. Ticknor's Gracie of Alabama; to Dr. Samuel Minturn Peck for his Grapevine Swing; to Madison Cawein for The Old Barn; to Elbert Hubbard for A Message to Garcia; and to Benjamin Sledd for The Children. The selections from Longfellow, Burroughs, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, Hawthorne, Trowbridge, Horace E. Scudder, Olive Thorne Miller, and Joel Chandler Harris are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of their works. |