I have gathered a posie of other men's COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY LEE AND SHEPARD All rights reserved. S. J. PARKHILL & CO., PRINTERS Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. — ABD-EL-KADER Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. - EMERSON Books are the beehives of thought; laconics, the honey taken from them. -**** Proverbs are potted wisdom. - CHARLES BUXTON Apothegms form a short cut to much knowledge.-THOMAS HOOD A verse may find him whom a sermon flies. GEORGE HERBERT A downright fact may be briefly told. JOHN RUSKIN By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we quote.-EMERSON The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy.-WILLIAM PENN Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted JONATHAN SWIFT Short sentences drawn from long experience. - CERVANTES What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and thinking.-O. W. HOLMES If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.—JEREMY TAYLOR There is not less wit, nor less invention, in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. PIERRE BOYLE To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. — ABBÉ TRUBLET C.F. Butler 8-15-39 PREFACE Ir is not especially a modern idea, to inculcate moral training and noble aims by the memorizing and repetition of all that is best of the mature thoughts of great minds. The intelligence of India, Persia, China, Arabia, Greece, and Germany, ages ago, recognized the force and importance of this means of culture; but in our own country, amid the manifold suggestions that have been brought forward to broaden and strengthen our grand republican public-school system, this matter of memorizing well-selected gems of literature has found but small place, until very recently. The credit of first incorporating this study into the regular public-school curriculum belongs, I believe, to Mr. John B. Peaslee, the able and longtime superintendent of the Cincinnati public schools. He says, 66 Apart from the literary value of such work, apart from the love of reading good books which it develops in the pupils, I believe that gems of literature, judiciously selected, form the best |