It may be well to add in passing that such a series of lessons serves as a basis to which all the related lessons may be referred. When the children read about the oriole or the robin, he is compared with the canary, and the old lesson explains and reënforces the new. The value of such lessons depends upon the teacher’s recognition of this relation. The children need not know the skeleton of her plan, but she must know the end from the beginning.
II.—Study of “The Builders”—Longfellow.
PREPARATION FOR THE POEM.
If the readers are young children, it would be well to prepare for the reading of the poem by a lesson upon the material building. It is possible that the carpenters and masons are already at work in the immediate neighborhood of the schoolhouse. The children have been interested in watching the digging of the cellar, the laying of the foundation stone, the fixing of the frame in position, the building of the walls. A little questioning and observation will lead them to see how necessary it is to the strength of the building that every part be well shaped and firmly placed. There may be unfortunate examples in their neighborhood which show the folly of dishonest building. They may easily be led to realize what harm may result from slighting any piece of work, or falsely covering any weakness. Anecdotes are abundant to illustrate this: the bridge which gives way beneath the weight of the passing train, carrying hundreds to death; the dam which has weak timber, yielding to the pressure of the freshet; the elevator which falls with its precious load. These point to building which was insecure and treacherous. For the other side of the picture, we turn to the old cathedrals, showing the children the beautiful spires, the exquisite carving, and telling them how they have endured through the ages because their builders did honest work.
Such a lesson prepares for the interpretation of the poem, which turns our thought to the building which we are shaping with our to-days and yesterdays. The lesson of the unstable wall, the falling bridge, as well as the grace and strength of the cathedral, serve now as a parallel for the poet’s teaching, and the inevitable result to others is seen as well as felt when we read of the “broken stairways, where the feet stumble as they seek to climb.” After such lessons, every line is filled with meaning as the children read and re-read the inspiring poem. Then it is time to memorize every line, but especially the two stanzas,
“In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
“Let us do our work as well,