Fortuna

Heath's Modern Language Series
, by Enrique Pérez Escrich.
EDITED WITH NOTES, DIRECT-METHOD EXERCISES, AND VOCABULARY BY ELIJAH CLARENCE HILLS PROFESSOR OF SPANISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AND LOUISE REINHARDT INSTRUCTOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN THE COLORADO SPRINGS HIGH SCHOOL D.C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1922, BY D.C. HEATH & CO. PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Fortuna is probably the most popular dog story in Spanish. It makes pleasant reading, it holds the student's interest throughout, and its language is clear and simple.
The author of Fortuna , Enrique Pérez Escrich (1829-1897), was born in Valencia, Spain, but he went to Madrid when a young man. He was a prolific writer of popular stories. Both Fortuna and Tony , another dog story by the same author, are evidence that Pérez Escrich knew dogs and loved them. One can not read these stories without feeling greater admiration and respect for the dog, the best friend that man has among the animals. Fortuna also gives an interesting account of the adventures of a boy who is kidnapped and is finally rescued with the aid of the dog whom he had befriended and who thus undertook to pay his debt of gratitude.
For a brief account of the life and works of Pérez Escrich, see Julio Cejador y Frauca, Historia de la Lengua y Literatura Castellana , Vol. VIII (pages 56-57), Madrid, 1918.
In this edition of Fortuna some words and sentences have been omitted from the text because they were uninteresting and unimportant. In a few cases expressions have been left out because they were unusual and therefore not adapted to elementary instruction.
In the exercises there is an abundance of direct-method material. Each of the exercises consists of four parts. The first part gives simple grammatical questions. The second contains idiomatic expressions to be committed to memory and to be used in the formation of sentences. The third part gives questions on the subject matter of the story which are to be answered in Spanish. And the fourth contains connected sentences to be translated from English into Spanish. Those teachers who prefer that the students in the elementary classes should not translate English into Spanish may postpone or omit altogether this part of the exercises if they wish to do so.