LANGUAGE LESSONS PART TWO BY ROBERT C. METCALF SUPERVISOR OF SCHOOLS, BOSTON, MASS. AND ORVILLE T. BRIGHT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, COOK COUNTY, ILL. NEW YORK.:. CINCINNATI: CHICAGO PREFACE. THIS book is designed to give pupils of the intermediate and higher grades of elementary schools such practice as will enable them to speak and write the English language correctly. Correct habits of speaking and writing are gained far more readily by careful practice and by imitation of good models than by a memorizing of rules or by a scientific analysis of the language; hence the study of good American literature has been made a marked feature of the work in this book. Eight of our great poets are treated successively, in seven chapters, by presenting such study of their most noteworthy poems as will lead the pupil to appreciate the thought of the writers, to acquire a taste for what is best in literature, and to imitate, as far as possible, the purity of expression. Great care has been taken to avoid making these studies irksome. The study of a poem should never be allowed to become tiresome to the children. The pupils should read and enjoy; the study should be merely incidental, and should cease when it fails to increase the pleasure of reading. |