Literature for Children. 7 



gal." '"She's learnin!' he added proudly; ' learniu' well! 

 I'll bet there ain't no <jjal in your school knows more nor that 

 little un does. Won'erful, the way she walks ahead.' 



' Get the school readers, hey, and teach her yourself, do 

 you?' queried Captain Nazro. 



'No, sir!' replied the old man; "I don't have no school 

 readers. The child learns out o' the two best books in the 

 world — the Bible and William Shakespeare's book; them's all 

 the books she ever seed — sua', I should say.' 



' William Shak — ' began Captain Nazro, and then he broke 

 off in sheer amazement, and said simply, ' Well, I'm blowed! ' " 



Then follows the charming story of the little ten-year-old 

 child with '' her cloud of pale-gold hair " and her soft, deep, 

 shadowy blue eyes, to whom Samson and Imogen and Ariel 

 were as real as the cold waves that washed her to the rocky 

 shore and to the warmth of the old sailor's heart. "An ideal 

 picture," you tell me. Is it merely ideal, or was it drawn from 

 life? Last May I received a letter from an Omaha lady in 

 which, writing about another subject, she spoke of her little 



girl, then nine years old: " M is very fond of her father's 



library. * * * * The books she is simply devoted to 

 are the plays of Shakespeare and the Bible." Was Captain 

 January so far wrong in taking the advice of his minister and 

 bringing up the '' little gal " on those, the two best books in 

 the world? Harriet Martineau, after relating the story I have 

 quoted, tells of her own childhood-reading: "I devoured all 

 of Shakespeare, sitting on a footstool and reading by firelight. 

 * * * * I made shirts with due diligence, being fond 

 of sewing; but it was with Goldsmith, or Thomson, or Milton, 

 open in my lap. under my work, or hidden by the table." One 

 of our own State teachers, one whom we all delight to honor, 

 told me a few weeks ago that he had read all of Goethe's 

 "Faust" with his little thirteen-year-old girl, to her great 

 enjoyment, and that last summersheread aloneall of Chaucer's 

 " Canterbury Tales." Many teachers have found young chil- 

 dren delighted with Dante. I have to my own satisfaction 

 discovered that little children, not yet able to read, will be 

 deeply interested in the stories of the Bible read to them from 



