The essays here given represent various types, including not only the chatty, familiar essay but also informational essays, critical essays, biographical essays, story essays, and one or two examples of highly poetic prose.
An informal introduction, paving the way to a sympathetic understanding, precedes every essay. Notes below the pages of text explain immediately all the literary or historical allusions with which a young reader might not be familiar, their close position to the text making it unnecessary for a student to hunt for an explanation.
Suggestive questions given immediately after every essay make it possible for the teacher to assign lessons quickly; they also enable the student to study by himself and to feel assured that he will not miss any important point.
Twenty subjects, suitable as subjects for essays to be written by the student in direct imitation of the essay that immediately precedes them, follow every selection. In addition to this great number of appropriate modern subjects, more than 500 in number, on which young students can express their real selves, there are given, in connection with every list of subjects, directions for writing,—such as a teacher might give a class when assigning written work.
The subject-lists and the directions for writing give the teacher a remarkable opportunity to stimulate a class as never before; to awaken a spirit of genuine self-expression; and to teach English composition in a way that he can not possibly do through the medium of any of our present-day rhetorics.
For the advantage of those teachers who wish to combine the teaching of the essay and of the short story, and who may not have at hand any suitable collection of short stories, the book includes not only introductory material concerning the nature of the short story and the development of the short story form, but also a series of stories of unusual interest for young readers, so chosen and so arranged that they represent the development of the short story through the legendary tale, the historical story, and the romantic story of adventure, to the story of realism and of character. In every case the story chosen is one that any student will enjoy and will understand immediately, as well as one that he can imitate both with pleasure and with success.
Introductions, foot notes, suggestive questions, subjects for written imitation, and directions for writing, follow every story.
If the book is used both as a means of awakening literary appreciation and developing honesty, originality, and power in written self-expression it will give pleasure to teachers and students alike.