Those wet arms round his neck,
And folded to his heart his boy—
Then fainted on the deck.
In the second place, the reason for choosing selections in which the emotion is akin to those of the child’s own experience must be clear. How many pupils ten or eleven years old can be expected to enter into the spirit of Whittier’s The Barefoot Boy?
Blessings on thee, little man—
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still,
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;