THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART XI. 693 



To get the best results from reading in our country homes, we should 

 have a program and devote a certain time — say four hours per week in 

 winter — to systematic reading, with some fixed purpose in view. If it 

 is a standard novel, and no other should enter your home, read it care- 

 fully, take up its leading parts and discuss it with the family. It will 

 aid your memory and at least give you a wholesome thing to talk about. 

 If you take up the classics, and you should three or four each winter, 

 they are very helpful and you can get them very cheaply — English classics 

 as low as 5 or 10 cents. I am not a book agent but I will gladly give any 

 one a list of either the novels or the classics that I would recommend you 

 to read. 



Allow me to argue for a short time the value of a literary education, 

 rather than the scientific to furnish the equipment our children need for 

 active service in the cause of humanity. There is no other preparation 

 in our schools so valuable as the study of our great authors. I know there 

 is a prevalent idea that literature is not strengthening but to consider 

 it thoughtfully proves the contrary. Shakespear's training, like all the 

 great writers of ancient or modern times, was wholly literary rather than 

 scientific. Caesar knew nothing of science. Milton was indebted to Homer, 

 Spencer and Shakespeare. The greatest statesman of England, Wm. E. 

 Gladstone, was a man of letters; Bismarck a graduate of two classic uni- 

 versities; Wm. M. Evarts, the foremost lawyer of America, a Yale classic 

 graduate. Did not the pen of Moses shape the Hebrew civilization? In 

 Greek and Roman life was not the Iliad the most potent factor, and is not 

 our modern civilization but the outgrowth of the Book or Books. He 

 who wrote the Preamble of our Constitution, "We, the people," etc., and 

 118 of the 350 men who sat in the Continental Congress were classic grad- 

 uates. He who ably wrote and who grandly defended by his mortal utter- 

 ances the Declaration of Independence and 28 of the 56 signers who hurled 

 this charter in to the teeth of the British lion making the republic possible 

 and bequeathing to us and our posterity the blessings of liberty, were class- 

 ical graduates. 



The proper study of literature corrects wrong tendencies. It does not 

 give radical changes but always tending forward and so accomplishes its 

 purpose. 



To get the best results in literary work in our public schools, we 

 should have a place for it on the program and in our course of study and 

 devote as much time as to any other subject — not bring it up some Friday 

 afternoon as though of no great importance. The child should be taught 

 that right expression is as important as the multiplication table. Emer- 

 son says: "We send our children to school thinking that the teacher, the 

 studies educate them. But in reality it is their companions, the shop 

 windows, the streets.' Now if true I know of nothing better to counteract 

 this street education than to make pure wholesome literature his com- 

 panion. It should be presented so prominently and attractively that the 

 child will learn to recognize its value and to love it. 



