In addition to the shorter biographical stories just mentioned, as children advance into the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, they should make a close acquaintance with a few of the great biographies. There is an abundance of excellent American biographies, but we should limit ourselves to those most important and best suited to influence the character of young people. It is necessary also to use those which have been written in a style easily comprehended by the children. Some of the best are as follows: Scudder's "Life of Washington," Franklin's "Autobiography," Hosmer's "Life of Samuel Adams," and the lives of John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Lincoln in the "Statesman Series." There are two fairly good books of Lincoln's early life for children. There are also many shorter biographies included in the books recommended for regular or collateral reading.
In style and content the story of Franklin is one of the best for children. The "Autobiography" of Franklin has many graphic touches from American life. His intense practical personality, his many-sidedness and public spirit, make up a character that will long instruct and open out in many directions the minds of the young. His clear sense and wisdom in small affairs as in great, and the pleasing style of his narrative, are sufficiently characteristic to have a strong personal impression. It will hardly be necessary to take the whole of the "Autobiography," but the more attractive parts, leaving the rest to the private reading of children. "Poor Richard's Almanac" intensifies the notion of Franklin's practical and everyday wisdom, and at the same time introduces the children to a form of literature that, in colonial days, under Franklin's patronage, had a wide acceptance and lasting influence in America.
Plutarch's "Lives" furnish a series of great biographies which grammar school children should become well acquainted with. The lives of American writers and poets should be brought to the attention of children in conjunction with their productions. "The Children's Stories of American Literature" and the introductory chapters of many of the masterpieces furnish this interesting and stimulating material. It should not be neglected by pupils and teachers. For older pupils and for teachers several of Macaulay's "Essays" are valuable, and the style is strikingly interesting. For example, the essays on Samuel Johnson, Lord Chatham, Milton, Addison, and Frederick the Great. Motley's "Essay on Peter the Great" and Carlyle's "Essay on Burns" are of similar interest and value. "The Schönberg Cotta Family" is valuable in the upper grammar grades. Most of this kind of reading must be outside reference work if it is done at all. Teachers should, first of all, enrich their own experience by these readings, occasionally bring a book to the class from which selections may be read, and, secondly, encourage the more enthusiastic and capable children to this wider field of reading.
6. Historical Poems and Pictures of American Life.
Some of the best American poems and prose masterpieces are fine descriptions of American life and manners, in different parts of the country and at various times. Such are: "Courtship of Miles Standish," "Tales of the White Hills," "Snow-Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," and "Sleepy Hollow." "The Gentle Boy," "Mabel Martin," "Giles Corey," "Evangeline," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and some of the great biographies, like those of Samuel Adams, Franklin, Washington, and Lincoln, are also fine descriptions of home life in America. The same may be said of some of the masterpieces of English and European literature, for example, "Ivanhoe," "Roger de Coverley," "The Christmas Carol," "Vicar of Wakefield," "William Tell," "Silas Marner," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and "Schönberg Cotta Family."
The culture value of these pictures of home and domestic life for young people is surpassingly great. Gradually their views are broadened, and they may be imbued with those social, home-bred qualities and virtues so fundamental in human life.
Irving's stories and Longfellow's "Miles Standish" give a still more pronounced and pleasing literary cast to two of the characteristic forms of life in our colonial history, the Puritan and the Dutch Patroon. If the children have reached this point, where they can read and enjoy the "Sketch-Book," it will be worth much as a description of life along the Hudson, and will develop taste and appreciation for literary excellence. Even the fanciful and ridiculous elements conduce to mental health and soundness, by showing up in pleasing satire the weaknesses and foibles of well-meaning people.
"Snow-Bound," "Songs of Labor," and "Among the Hills," while not historical in the usual sense, are still plainly American, and may well be associated with other poetic delineations of American life. "Snow-Bound" is a picture of New England life, with its pleasing and deep-rooted memories. Its family spirit and idealization of common objects and joys make it a classic which reaches the hearts of boys and girls. "Among the Hills" is also a picture of home life in New England mountains, a contrast of the mean and low in home environment to the beauty of thrift and taste and unselfish home joys. The "Songs of Labor" are descriptive of the toils and spirit of our varied employments in New England and of that larger New England which the migrating Yankees have established between the oceans.
"Evangeline" is another literary pearl that enshrines in sad and mournful measures a story of colonial days, and teaches several great lessons, as of the harshness and injustice of war, of fair-mindedness and sympathy for those of alien speech and country, of patience and gentleness and loyalty to high ideals in a character familiar and sacred to all.
7. The Poetry of Nature in the Masterpieces of Literature.