Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading / Selected from English and American Literature

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed
Proofreaders
1893
The attentive reader of this little book will be apt to notice very soon that though its title is Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading , the verse occupies nine tenths, the prose being confined to about two hundred proverbs and familiar sayings—some of them, indeed, in rhyme—scattered in groups throughout the book. The reason for this will be apparent as soon as one considers the end in view in the preparation of this compilation.
The Riverside Primer and Reader , as stated in its Introduction, is designed to serve as the sole text-book in reading required by a pupil. When he has mastered it he is ready to make the acquaintance of the world's literature in the English tongue. In that book, therefore, the pupil was led by easy exercises to an intelligent reading of pieces of literature, both verse and prose, so that he might become in a slight degree familiar with literature before he parted with his sole text-book. But the largest space had, of necessity, to be given to practice work, which led straight to literature, indeed, though to a small quantity only. The verse offered in that book was drawn from nursery rhymes and from a few of the great masters of poetical form; the prose was furnished by a selection of proverbs, some of the simplest folk stories, and two passages, closing the book, from the Old and New Testaments.
The pupil, upon laying down his Primer and Reader and proposing to enter the promised land of literature, could find a volume of prose consisting of Fables and Folk Stories , into the pleasures of which he had already been initiated; but until now he could find no volume of poetry especially prepared for him which should fulfill the promise of the verse offered to him in his Primer and Reader . Be it remembered that he was not so much to read verse written expressly for him, as to overhear the great poets when they sang so simply, so directly, and yet with so penetrating a note that the burden of their song, full, it may be, to the child's elders, would have an awakening power for the child himself. As so often said, a child can receive and delight in a poem through the ear long before he is able to attain the same pleasure through the eye; and there are many poems in such a book, for example, as Miss Agnes Repplier's A Book of Famous Verse , wholly delightful for a child to listen to which yet it would be impossible for him to read to himself.