By this time he has eighteen new words on the blackboard of which to make sentences with the nine loose words of ‘pussy.’ Her skittle is little, her charm is brittle, her arm is warm, and so on. But we take care that the sentences make sense. Her goat is brittle, is ‘silly,’ and not to be thought of at all. Tommy’s new words are written in his ‘note-book’ in print hand, so that he can take stock of his possessions in the way of words.

Moral Training in Reading Lessons.—​The next day we do the last two lines of the stanza, as at first. These lines afford hardly any material for a spelling lesson, so in our next lesson we go on with the second verse. But our stock of words is growing; we are able, as we go on, to make an almost unlimited number of little sentences. If we have to use counters now and then, why, that only whets our appetite for knowledge. By the time Tommy has worked ‘Little Pussy’ through he has quite a large stock of words; has considerable power to attack new words with familiar combinations; what is more, he has achieved; he has courage to attack all ‘learning,’ and has a sense that delightful results are quite within reach. Moreover, he learns to read in a way that affords him some moral training. There is no stumbling, no hesitation from the first, but bright attention and perfect achievement. His reading lesson is a delight, of which he is deprived when he comes to his lesson in a lazy, drawling mood. Perfect enunciation and precision are insisted on, and when he comes to arrange the whole of the little rhyme in his loose words and read it off (most delightful of all the lessons) his reading must be a perfect and finished recitation.[17] I believe that this is a practical common-sense way to teach reading in English. It may be profitable for the little German child to work through all possible dreary combinations of letters before he is permitted to have any joy in ‘reading,’ because wherever these combinations occur they will have the sounds the child has learned laboriously. The fact that English is anomalous as regards the connection between sign and sound, happily exonerates us from enforcing this dreary grind.[18]

VII.—RECITATION

‘The Children’s Art’

On this subject I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr Arthur Burrell’s Recitation.[19] This book purports to be a handbook for teachers in elementary schools. I wish that it may be very largely used by such teachers, and may also become a family handbook; though many of the lessons will not be called for in educated homes. There is hardly any ‘subject’ so educative and so elevating as that which Mr Burrell has happily described as ‘The Children’s Art.’ All children have it in them to recite; it is an imprisoned gift waiting to be delivered, like Ariel from the pine. In this most thoughtful and methodical volume we are possessed of the fit incantations. Use them duly, and out of the woodenness of even the most commonplace child steps forth the child-artist, a delicate sprite, who shall make you laugh and make you weep. Did not the great Sir Walter “sway to and fro, sobbing his fill,” to his little ‘Pet’s’ speaking of—

“For I am sick, and capable of fears,

Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears;

A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;

A woman, naturally born to fears”?

Marjorie Fleming was, to be sure, a child-genius; but in this book we learn by what carefully graduated steps a child who is not a genius, is not even born of cultivated parents, may be taught the fine art of beautiful and perfect speaking; but that is only the first step in the acquisition of ‘The Children’s Art.’ The child should speak beautiful thoughts so beautifully, with such delicate rendering of each nuance of meaning, that he becomes to the listener the interpreter of the author’s thought. Now, consider what appreciation, sympathy, power of expression this implies, and you will grant that ‘The Children’s Art’ is, as Steele said of the society of his wife, “a liberal education in itself.” It is objected—‘Children are such parrots! They say a thing as they hear it said; as for troubling themselves to “appreciate” and “interpret,” not a bit of it!’ Most true of the ‘My name is Norval’ style of recitation; but throughout this volume the child is led to find the just expression of the thought for himself; never is the poor teacher allowed to set a pattern—‘say this as I say it.’ The ideas are kept well within the child’s range, and the expression is his own. He is caught with guile, his very naughtiness is pressed into service, he finds a dozen ways of saying ‘I shan’t,’ is led cunningly up to the point of expressing himself, and—he does it, to his own surprise and delight. The pieces given here for recitation are a treasure-trove of new joys. ‘Winken, Blinken, and Nod,’ ‘Miss Lilywhite’s Party,’ and ‘The Two Kittens,’ would compel any child to recite. Try a single piece over with the author’s markings and suggestions, and you will find there is as much difference between the result and ordinary reading aloud as there is in a musical composition played with and without the composer’s expression marks. I hope that my readers will train their children in the art of recitation; in the coming days, more even than in our own, will it behove every educated man and woman to be able to speak effectively in public; and, in learning to recite you learn to speak.