[1]

Practical Recitations

Selections for Literary Exercises

APPROPRIATE FOR

Reception-Days, Holidays, Poets’ Birthdays, etc.,

INCLUDING

CONCERT AND MUSICAL RECITATIONS, AND DIALOGUES
FROM POPULAR AUTHORS, ESPECIALLY
ARRANGED FOR THIS WORK.

BY
Caroline B. LeRow,
Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly
Instructor in Vassar and Smith Colleges.

NEW YORK:
Clark & Maynard, Publishers,
771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth Street.

[2]

A Practical Reader.

WITH
EXERCISES IN VOCAL CULTURE.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW,

Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly at Smith and Vassar Colleges.

All students are expected to be able to read well ordinary prose and poetry, and it is for the purpose of helping them to do this, as well as to help teachers in the teaching of reading, that this book is prepared.

It is thoroughly practical. No unnecessary technical terms are used. The subjects explained and illustrated are those only which, as the result of many years’ experience among teachers as well as pupils, the compiler has found most necessary.

As physical development and correct vocalization must precede all good reading, the simplest and therefore most essential physical and vocal exercises are given, with full directions for their use.

The selections for reading present nothing of a merely showy style of elocution. They are adapted for the upper classes of Grammar Schools, as well as for High and advanced schools.

We claim that the Practical Reader contains more suitable material for elocutionary work in the school-room, in more condensed, analytical, and available form, than any other Reader or Speaker before the public.

224 Pages, 16mo, Handsome Cloth Binding, Red Edges.

A Specimen Copy for Examination, or Copies for Introduction, will be Delivered at 60 Cents Each.

How to Teach Reading.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Failure in the Teaching of Reading—Teaching by Imitation—Natural and Logical Method—Variety in Teaching—Physical Exercise—Value of Exercise—Directions for Using Exercises—Exercises for the Body—Exercises for the Chest—Cautions in the Use of Physical Exercises—Breathing—Breathing Exercises—Cautions in the Use of Breathing Exercises—Whispering—Articulation—Vowel Sounds—Consonant Sounds—Final Consonants—Physical Effort in Articulation—Impediments of Speech—Blundering Articulation—Manner of Practicing Exercises in Articulation—Spelling Words by Sounds—Naturalness in Reading—Place of Emphasis—Selection of Words—Teaching without a Book—Punctuation—Sense Independent of Punctuation—The Reading of Poetry—Concert Reading—Reading and Singing—Vocal Accuracy in Recitations—Breathlessness in Reading—Timidity in Reading—Work in Advanced Classes—Special Faults—Extract from “Reading as a Fine Art.”

32 Pages. Price Postpaid, 12 Cents per Copy.

CLARK & MAYNARD, Publishers,
771 Broadway, New York.

Copyright, 1886, by Clark & Maynard.

Recitations form one of the most attractive features of school entertainments, and give a pleasant variety to every-day work; yet few teachers have the time, even if they have the ability, to drill pupils in the long and difficult pieces which form the bulk of the countless Recitations offered to the public.

The selections included in this volume are in harmony with the spirit of class-room work, which demands brevity, simplicity, good sense, and sound morality. This is the only compilation of the kind in which these matters are considered as of equal importance with elocutionary effect. Very few of the pieces are to be found in any other book, and each one has been practically tested in the school-room. The style of rendering, wherever specified, can be changed, of course, to suit the taste of the teacher.

As it is desirable that the largest possible number of students should share in such exercises, many short selections, excellent for practice in correct emphasis and distinct articulation, are provided for the purpose.

The observance of our poets’ birthdays is becoming a pleasant and profitable custom in most schools, and[4] provision has been made for these anniversaries as well as for all other holidays.

As it is not possible to make liberal provision for each poet, it is hoped that the Alphabets will be suggestive of their best poems, and the prose extracts concerning the writers will inspire in students a desire to become better acquainted with them and their works.

• Alcott, Louisa M., 251
• Arnold, Edwin, 30
• Barr, Mary A., 62
• Bartlett, David W., 153
• Bartol, Rev. C. A., 125
• Bates, Katharine Lee, 207
• Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 100
• Bellows, Rev. Henry W., 116
• Bigelow, John, 115
• Blackmore, R. D., 240
• Bland, T. A., 238
• Boyd, Rev. A. K. H., 13
• Bradley, Mary E., 82, 217
• Bright, John, 163
• Bryant, William Cullen, 78, 121, 122, 123, 212
• Bunyan, John, 245
• Burnham, Anna F., 25
• Butterworth, Hezekiah, 182, 192
• Butts, Mary Frances, 29
• Carleton, Will, 22
• Cary, Alice, 213
• Charles, E., 95
• Coleridge, Hartley, 214
• Collyer, Rev. Robert, 51
• Cooke, George Willis, 125
• Coolidge, Susan, 24, 64
• Craik, Dinah Mulock, 199, 203, 233
• Curtis, George Wm., 116, 134, 143
• Cutler, J. S., 76
• Dewey, Rev. Orville, 28
• Dixey, Wolstan, 111
• Dodge, Mary E., 223
• Dumas, Alexander, 225
• Eliot, Charles W., 133
• Eliot, George, 229
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 129, 130, 131
• Farningham, Marianne, 12, 15
• Fern, Fanny, 237
• Fields, James T., 155
• Frothingham, Rev. O. B., 143
• Garfield, James A., 74
• Gates, Ellen M. H., 21
• Gellert, Christian, 67
• Goodale, Dora, 49
• Goodale, Elaine, 34
• Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 115
• Handy, M. P., 68
• Haweis, Rev. H. R., 153
• Hemans, Felicia, 78
• Herrick, Robert, 184, 222
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 125, 139, 140, 141, 151
• Hopkins, Louisa Parsons, 200, 215
• Howells, William D., 185
• Hugo, Victor, 254
• Jackson, Helen Hunt, 79
• Jewett, Ella, 44
• Jones, Rosaline E., 216
• Kennedy, Wm. Sloane, 134
• Kimball, Harriet McEwen, 173
• Kingsley, Charles, 247
• Kinney, Elizabeth C., 124
• Larcom, Lucy, 210
• Lawrence, Kate, 77
• LeRow, C. B., 92
• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 148, 149, 150, 171, 201
• Lowell, James Russell, 91, 157, 159, 160, 161
• Lytton, E. Bulwer, 235
• Mabie, Hamilton W., 60
• Mace, Frances L., 108
• Mackay, Charles, 188
• Mann, Horace, 39
• Miller, Emily H., 42
• Miller, Joaquin, 74
• Moore, Ella Maud, 113
• Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder, 126
• Müller, Wilhelm, 87
• Orne, C. F., 18
• Palmer, Rev. Ray, 133
• Peeke, Maggie B., 55, 59
• Perry, Carlotta, 50
• Phelps, Eliz. Stuart, 195
• Pollard, Josephine, 14, 48
• Preston, Margaret J., 40
• Randall, Wm. H., 175
• Reade, Charles, 243
• Rexford, Eben E., 57
• Sangster, Margaret E., 186, 203
• Sargent, Epes, 227
• Sargent, Helen Lee, 26
• Savage, Rev. Minot J., 144, 197
• Scott, Walter, 90, 189
• Scranton, Bertha S., 190
• Scudder, Horace E., 124, 162
• Shepherd, Nathan G., 72
• Shurtleff, Ernest W., 35
• Sidney, Margaret, 176
• Smith, May Riley, 202
• Smith, Rev. Sydney, 17
• Smuller, E. A., 187
• Southey, Robert, 105, 214
• Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 172
• Stedman, Edmund C., 107
• Stoddard, Richard H., 143, 162
• Story, William W., 66, 142
• Taylor, Bayard, 54
• Tennyson, Alfred, 208
• Thaxter, Celia, 110, 175, 206
• Thompson, Phillips, 27
• Thorne, Meta E. B., 85
• Underwood, Frances H., 133, 152, 161
• Veley, Margaret, 205
• Washington, George, 71, 181
• Wasson, Rev. David A., 162
• Wetherell, Elizabeth, 231
• Whipple, Edwin P., 116
• Whittier, John Greenleaf, 132, 142, 167, 168, 170, 185, 221
• Whitney, Adeline D. T., 32
• Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 35
• Willis, Nathaniel P., 208
• Winslow, Helen M., 109
• Wordsworth, Wm., 41, 212

After Vacation.

[12]

The People’s Holidays.

Marianne Farningham.

[13]

Home Lights.

Concerning Beginnings and Ends.

Rev. A. K. H. Boyd.

We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop and start again in everything. The journey that crushes us down when we contemplate it as one long weary thing can be borne when we divide it into stages. And one great lesson of practical wisdom is to train ourselves to mentally divide everything into stages. It would crush down any man’s resolution if he saw in one glance the whole enormous bulk of labor which he will get through in a lifetime. And yet you know, and the little child knows just as well, that after he has conquered that tremendous alphabet, he must begin again with something else, he must mount from his first little book onwards and upwards into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step by step.

[14]

A Strange Experience.

Josephine Pollard.

The Daily Task.

Marianne Farningham.

“What’s the Lesson for To-day?”

Moral Courage.

Rev. Sydney Smith.

A great deal of talent is lost in the world for the want of a little courage. The fact is, that to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating tasks, and adjusting nice chances; it did very well before the flood, where a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for an hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its success afterwards: but at present, a man waits and doubts and hesitates, and consults his brother and his uncle and particular friends, till one fine day he finds that he is sixty years of age; that he has lost so much time in consulting his first cousin and particular friends, that he has no more time to follow their advice.

[18]

No Work the Hardest Work.

Charles F. Orne.

Some Old School-books.

[21]

Their Cost.

Ellen M. H. Gates.

A true life must be simple in all its elements.—Horace Greeley.

[22]

The Old Reading Class.

Will Carleton.

[24]

Forward.

Susan Coolidge.

[25]

Her Angel.

Anna F. Burnham.

Are the Heroes Dead?

Helen Lee Sargent.

[27]

Failed!
a poem of hard times.

Phillips Thompson.

Labor.

Rev. Orville Dewey.

To some field of labor, mental or manual, every idler should fasten, as a chosen and coveted theater of improvement. But so he is not impelled to do, under the teachings of our imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses himself in his idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which Mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven’s great ordinance. Toil, I repeat—toil, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true nobility.

[29]

The Holy Place.

Mary Frances Butts.

[30]

A Discourse of Buddha.

Edwin Arnold.

We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. It cannot be said that as a people we are so positively sad or morose as that we are vacant of that sportiveness of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and that springs from full and harmonious life,—a sound heart in accord with a sound body. A man must invest himself near at hand, and in common things, and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart, and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is a lesson the American has yet to learn,—capability of amusement on a low key.—John Burroughs.

[32]

To fill the youthful mind with lofty and noble ideas, to stock the memory with the richest vocabulary, and to acquire a wide command of our grand English language, we have nothing better, except the Bible, than the plays of Shakespeare.

Extracts from Shakespeare once thoroughly committed to memory are never forgotten. Many of the world’s great orators and statesmen were wont to commit and recite passages from Shakespeare. Edmund Burke made Shakespeare his daily study, while Erskine, it is said, could have held conversation on every subject in the phrases of the great dramatist. Rufus Choate was familiar with every line of Shakespeare. Daniel Webster never tired of repeating passages from the same author. The genial Dr. Holmes tells us that Wendell Phillips, Motley the historian, and himself, when boys, used to declaim Antony’s oration on holiday afternoons over the prostrate form of some younger playmate.

Sparrows.

Adeline D. T. Whitney.

But, above all, where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness—attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sinai thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the silence of deep eternities, of worlds beyond the morning stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old graves, with their long moldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry—do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.—Thomas Carlyle.

[34]

The Storming of Stony Point.

(July 16, 1779.)

Elaine Goodale.

[35]

Humility.

Ernest W. Shurtleff.

[36]

What of That?

Knowledge has in our time triumphed, and is still triumphing, over prejudice and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.—Daniel Webster.

[37]

The Old Folks in the New School-house.

The Barbarous Chief.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Growth.

Horace Mann.

At first the mind cannot project itself outward, if we may so speak, even so far as the eye can reach. A child may see with the eye the outlines of a distant mountain long before his mind can, as it were, leap over the intervening space. But soon the mind attains a power of flight compared with which the space traveled by the keenest eye, aided by the best telescope, is nothing. The eye, indeed, can see the remote star, whose light, traveling since its creation at the rate of two hundred thousand miles a second, has but just reached the earth; but all this is only a hand-breadth compared with the depths in the abysses of space into which the adventurous mind plunges itself.

[40]

A Bird’s Ministry.

Margaret J. Preston.

Extract from a Letter.

William Wirt.

I want to tell you a secret. The way to make yourself pleasing to others, is to show that you care for them. The world is like the miller at Mansfield, “who cared for nobody, no, not he, because nobody cared for him.” And the whole world will serve you so if you give them the same cause. Let every one, therefore, see that you do care for them, by showing them what Sterne so happily calls “the small, sweet courtesies,” in which there is no parade; whose voice is to still, to ease; and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks and little kind acts of attention, giving others the preference in every little enjoyment at the table, in the field, walking, sitting, or standing.

[42]

The Coast-Guard.

Emily Huntington Miller.

A Turkish Tradition.

[44]

“Eyes that See Not.”

Ella Jewett.

Lamentation of the Lungs.

To read the English language well, to write with dispatch a neat, legible hand, and be master of the first rules of arithmetic, so as to dispose of at once, with accuracy, every question of figures which comes up in practice—I call this a good education. And if you add the ability to write pure grammatical English, I regard it as an excellent education. These are the tools. You can do much with them, but you are helpless without them. They are the foundation; and unless you begin with these, all your flashy attainments, a little geology, and all other ologies and osophies are ostentatious rubbish.—Edward Everett.

[46]

The Light-house.

A Swedish Poem.

[48]

The Demon on the Roof.

Josephine Pollard.

Only a Little.

Dora Goodale.

[50]

My Portion.

Carlotta Perry.

[51]

Saxon Grit.

Rev. Robert Collyer.

[53]

The Little Light.

Wind and Sea.

Bayard Taylor.

[55]

Happiness.

Maggie B. Peeke.

An Illumined Text.

Older than all preached gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work;—and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee? What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.—Thomas Carlyle.

[57]

The King’s Bell.

Eben E. Rexford.

[59]

Noblesse Oblige.

Carlotta Perry.

[60]

Uses of Adversity.

The Value of Literature.

The literature of the world is in a very deep sense the direct and most beautiful outcome of its life. Men have had but a partial success in shaping their external life, but their ideals, their aspirations, their highest thoughts of themselves are to be found in books. It is only as we unite the actual which we find in its history with the ideal which we find in its literature, that we are able to get any true understanding of an age. The value and vitality of great books lie not so much in their art as in the fidelity and completeness with which they represent human life. Literature is, in a word, the best that has been thought or dreamed in the world, and must therefore remain to the very end of time the most fascinating and the most fruitful study to which men can give themselves.—Hamilton W. Mabie.

[61]

True Heroism.

[62]

The Burial of the Old Flag.

Mary A. Barr.

The Old Stone Basin.

Susan Coolidge.

Beside the Railway Track.

[66]

A Song for the Conquered.

William W. Story.

The Amen of the Rocks.

Christian Gellert.

Only a Little Thing.

Mrs. M. P. Handy.

The Little Messenger of Love.

I’d rather be right than to be President of the United States.—Henry Clay.

[71]

Original Maxims of George Washington.

[Recitations for Twelve Students.]

I.

Commerce and industry are the best mines of a nation.

II.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distresses of every one.

III.

Ingratitude, I hope, will never constitute a part of my character, nor find a place in my bosom.

IV.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

V.

To persevere is one’s duty, and to be silent is the best answer to calumny.

VI.

I never wish to promise more than I have a moral certainty of performing.

VII.

I shall never attempt to palliate my own foibles by exposing the error of another.

VIII.

It is a maxim with me not to ask what, under similar circumstances, I would not grant.

IX.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well tried before you give them your confidence.

[72]

X.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

XI.

A good character is the first essential in a man. It is, therefore, highly important to endeavor not only to be learned, but virtuous.

XII.

I am resolved that no misrepresentations, falsehoods, or calumny shall make me swerve from what I conceive to be the strict line of duty.

The Work of a Sunbeam.

Nathan G. Shepherd.

[73]

The Silver Bird’s Nest.

[74]

Luther.

Joaquin Miller.

Original Maxims of James A. Garfield.

[Recitations for Ten Students.]

I.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

II.

Poets may be born, but success is made.

III.

Be fit for more than the one thing you are now doing.

IV.

I would rather be beaten in right than succeed in wrong.

V.

Luck is an ignis fatuus. You may follow it to ruin, but not to success.

[75]

VI.

If the power to do hard work is not a talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.

VII.

I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.

VIII.

Things don’t turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up.

IX.

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soil, its spirit, and its life.

X.

The privilege of being a young man is a great privilege, and the privilege of growing to be an independent man, in middle life, is a greater.

It is a strange fancy of mine, but I cannot help wishing we could move for returns—as their phrase is in parliament—for the suffering caused in any one day, or other period of time, throughout the world, to be arranged under certain heads; and we should then see what the world has occasion to fear most. What a large amount would come under the heads of unreasonable fear of others, of miserable quarrels amongst relations upon infinitesimally small subjects, of imaginary slights, of undue cares, of false shames, of absolute misunderstandings, of unnecessary pains to maintain credit or reputation, of vexation that we cannot make others of the same mind with ourselves! What a wonderful thing it would be to see set down in figures, as it were, how ingenious we are in plaguing one another!—Arthur Helps.

[76]

The Angel of Dawn.

J. S. Cutler.

[77]

Questions.

Kate Lawrence.

[78]

The Landing of the Pilgrims.

Felicia Hemans.

Plymouth (Dec. 21, 1620).

The Twenty-first of February.

William Cullen Bryant.

Forefathers’ Day.

Helen Hunt Jackson.

[80]

A True Story.

[82]

Little Christel.

Mrs. Mary E. Bradley.

Songs of the Seasons.

Meta E. B. Thorne.

[For Four Students.]

[87]

The Coming of Spring.

Wilhelm Müller.

[88]

The Good Time Coming.

Charles Mackay.

[90]

The Charge at Waterloo.

Sir Walter Scott.

[For Boy’s Recitation.]

[91]

Summer Storm.

James Russell Lowell.

[Abbreviated for Concert Recitation.]

[The following selection is peculiarly effective for concert recitation on account of the great number and variety of vocal changes. The italicized words should be given with abrupt, explosive sounds; the italicized final consonants with extreme distinctness of articulation; the pauses indicated by dashes should be exaggerated, and the time most accurately marked.]

Song of the Steamer Engine.

C. B. LeRow.

[This selection is adapted for Solo and Concert recitation. The first two and last two lines of each stanza, and the whole of the last stanza, are to be given in concert. The other lines can be assigned to one or to six students—the latter arrangement giving greater variety, as the stanzas differ widely in style. As the refrain, or chorus, is to imitate the peculiar beat or rhythm of the engine, the accent must fall upon the third syllable of each line, while each syllable is given with staccato effect, and the whole line on a monotone. The fifth stanza represents two equal beats on the two syllables—the rhythm of the engine when moving in half time on account of danger.]

[95]

The Child on the Judgment-Seat.

Mrs. E. Charles.

[Recitation for Two Students.]

[97]

The Two Glasses.

C. B. A.

[Recitation for Two Students.]

The Sorrow of the Sea.

[100]

The Death of our Almanac.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.

[Selection for Twelve Students.]

January. Darkness and light reign alike. Snow is on the ground, cold is in the air. The winter is blossoming in frost-flowers. Old sounds are silent in the forest and in the air. Insects are dead, birds are gone, leaves have perished. So hath God wiped out the past; so hath he spread the earth, like an unwritten page, for a new year.

February. As the month wears on its silent work begins, though storms rage. The earth is hidden yet, but not dead. The sun is drawing near. He whispers words of deliverance into the ears of every sleeping seed and root that lies beneath the snow. The day opens, but the night shuts the earth with its frost-lock; but day steadily gains upon the night.

March. The conflict is more turbulent, but the victory is gained. The world awakes. There come voices from long-hidden birds. The smell of the soil is in the air. The sullen ice, retreating from open field and all sunny places, has slunk to the north of every fence and rock. The knolls and banks that face the east or south sigh for release, and begin to lift up a thousand tiny palms.

April. The singing month. Many voices of many birds call for resurrection over the graves of flowers, and they come forth. Go, see what they have lost. What have ice, and snow, and storm done unto them? How did they fall into the earth, stripped and bare? How did they come forth, opening and glorified? Is it,[101] then, so fearful a thing to lie in the grave? In its wild career, shaking and scourged of storms through its orbit, the earth has scattered away no treasures. The Hand that governs in April governed in January. You have not lost what God has only hidden. You lose nothing in struggle, in trial, in bitter distress.

May. O Flower-month! perfect the harvests of flowers. Be not niggardly. Search out the cold and resentful nooks that refused the sun, casting back its rays from disdainful ice, and plant flowers even there. There is goodness in the worst. There is warmth in the coldest. The silent, hopeful, unbreathing sun, that will not fret or despond, but carries a placid brow through the unwrinkled heavens, at length conquers the very rocks, and lichens grow and inconspicuously blossom. What shall not Time do, that carries in its bosom Love?

June. Rest! This is the year’s bower. Sit down within it. The winds bring perfume, the forests sing to thee, the earth shows thee all her treasures. The air is all sweetness. The storms are but as flocks of mighty birds that spread their wings and sing in the high heaven. The earth cries to the heavens, “God is here!” The heavens cry to the earth, “God is here!” The land claims him, and his footsteps are upon the sea. O sunny joys of sunny June, how soon will you be scorched by the eager months coming burning from the equator!

July. Rouse up! The temperate heats that filled the air are raging forward to glow and overfill the earth. There are deep and unreached places for whose sake the probing sun pierces down its glowing hands. The earth shall drink of the heat before she knows her nature or[102] her strength. Then shall she bring forth to the uttermost the treasures of her bosom. For there are things hidden far down, and the deep things of life are not known till the fire reveals them.

August. Reign, thou Fire-month! Neither shalt thou destroy the earth which frosts and ice could not destroy. The vines droop, the trees stagger, but every night the dew pities them. This is the rejoicing month for joyful insects, the most populous and the happiest month. The air is resonant of insect orchestras, each one carrying his part in nature’s grand harmony. August, thou art the ripeness of the year, the glowing center of the great circle.

September. There are thoughts in thy heart of death. Thou art doing a secret work, and heaping up treasures for another year. The unborn infant-buds which thou art tending are more than all the living leaves. Thy robes are luxuriant, but worn with softened pride. More dear, less beautiful than June, thou art the heart’s month. Not till the heats of summer are gone, while all its growths remain, do we know the fullness of life. Thy hands are stretched out, and clasp the glowing palm of August, and the fruit-smelling hand of October. Thou dividest them asunder, and art thyself molded of them both.

October. Orchard of the year! Bend thy boughs to the earth, redolent of glowing fruit! Ripened seeds shake in their pods. Apples drop in the stillest hours. Leaves begin to let go when no wind is out, and swing in long waverings to the earth, which they touch without sound, and lie looking up, till winds rake them and heap them in fence-corners. When the gales come through the trees, the yellow leaves trail, like sparks at[103] night behind the flying engine. The woods are thinner, so that we can see the heavens plainer, as we lie dreaming on the yet warm moss by the singing spring. The days are calm. The nights are tranquil. The year’s work is done. She walks in gorgeous apparel, looking upon her long labor, and her serene eye saith, “It is good.”

November. Patient watcher, thou art asking to lay down thy tasks. Life to thee, now, is only a task accomplished. In the night-time thou liest down, and the messengers of winter deck thee with hoar-frosts for thy burial. The morning looks upon thy jewels, and they perish while it gazes. Wilt thou not come, O December?

December. Silently the month advances. There is nothing to destroy, but much to bury. Bury, then, thou snow, that slumberously fallest through the still air, the hedgerows of leaves! Muffle thy cold wool about the feet of shivering trees! Bury all that the year hath known, and let thy brilliant stars, that never shine as they do in thy frostiest nights, behold the work! But know, O month of destruction, that in thy constellation is set that Star whose rising is the sign, for evermore, that there is life in death! Thou art the month of resurrection. In thee the Christ came. Every star that looks down upon thy labor and toil of burial knows that all things shall come forth again. Storms shall sob themselves to sleep. Silence shall find a voice. Death shall live, Life shall rejoice, Winter shall break forth and blossom into Spring, Spring shall put on her glorious apparel and be called Summer. It is life! it is life! through the whole year!

[104]

Two Epitaphs.

[The following can be read by a class in concert, or by two sections of a class. It is a fine exercise in transition from soft to loud Force, slow to quick Time, low to high Pitch, minor to major Inflection.]

[105]

The Cataract of Lodore.

Robert Southey.

[For Solo and Concert Recitation.]

[Variations in Force, Time, Pitch, Quality, Staccato and Legato effect, to be made according to the idea expressed by the different words.]

[107]

Cavalry Song.

Edmund C. Stedman.

[For Boys’ Recitation.]

The Angelus.

Frances L. Mace.

[For pianissimo musical accompaniment.]

[109]

Hope’s Song.

Helen M. Winslow.

[110]

The Sunrise Never Failed us Yet.

Mrs. Celia Thaxter.

A Winter Song.

[With light, running staccato and legato accompaniments.]

The Concert Rehearsal.

Wolstan Dixey.

[113]

Rock of Ages.

[The quoted words can be either sung or recited. The melody should be played through once before the beginning of the recitation. The accompaniment, pianissimo, should run through the entire poem, being definite, and piano only on the quoted lines.]

The Blessing of the Poets.—I think it a very great boon which Heaven bestows on any nation when it sends a real poet among the people, like Longfellow or Whittier. I can’t understand why we take the gift so coldly. In some of the poems of Whittier you can almost hear the rustling of the leaves of the old family Bible, and in Longfellow’s lines you can listen to the rain on your roof, as you heard it while lying in your chamber in your childhood. It really seems to me that the whole poetic atmosphere of our time has been filled with a new fragrance by Whittier and Longfellow. They have taught us to prize afresh the loftiest virtues and the lowliest charities. Well may they indeed be called “Our Poets of the Household.” You may call them primary or secondary, if you choose; but their motive-power remains unquenchable and unchallengeable, and their words are graven in the hearts all over the human world.—James T. Fields.

Born Nov. 3, 1794. Died June 12, 1878.

William Cullen Bryant.

Fitz-Greene Halleck.

Bryant had a wonderful memory. His familiarity with the English poets was such that when at sea, where he was always too ill to read much, he would beguile the[116] time by reciting page after page from favorite poems. He assured me that however long the voyage, he had never exhausted his resources. He was scarcely less familiar with the languages and literatures of Germany, France and Spain, Greece and Rome. He spoke all living languages except the Greek with facility and correctness.—John Bigelow.

The name of Bryant cannot be mentioned by any friend to American letters without respect as well as admiration. The hold that he has on the profoundest feelings of his countrymen is to be referred to the genuineness, delicacy, depth, and purity of his sentiment. He is so genuine that he testifies to nothing in scenery or human life of which he has not had a direct personal consciousness. He follows the primitive bias of his nature rather than the caprices of fancy. His compositions always leave the impression of having been born, not manufactured or made.—Edwin P. Whipple.

It is the glory of this man that his character outshone even his great talent and his large fame. Distinguished equally for his native gifts and his consummate culture, his poetic inspiration and his exquisite art, he is honored and loved to-day even more for his stainless purity of life, his unswerving rectitude of will, his devotion to the higher interests of his race, his unfeigned patriotism, and his broad humanity.—Rev. Henry W. Bellows.

When Cooper died, the restless city paused to hear Bryant’s words of praise and friendship. When Irving[117] followed Cooper, all hearts turned to Bryant. Now Bryant has followed Cooper and Irving, the last of that early triumvirate of American literature. The broad and simple outline of his character and career had become universally familiar like a mountain or the sea. A patriarch of our literature, the oldest of our poets, he felt the magic of human sympathy, the impulse of his country, the political genius of his race, and was a public political leader.—George William Curtis.

A Bryant Alphabet.

[118]

[119]

[120]

[121]

The Third of November.

The Night Journey of a River.

[122]

The Hurricane.

[123]

Green River.

The Violet.

Born May 25, 1803. Died April 27, 1882.

Emerson.

Mrs. E. C. Kinney.

Emerson’s writings call for thought in the reader. They demand that one should stop and ask questions, should translate what one has read into one’s own ordinary speech, and inquire again if it is true. No one should read Emerson who is not willing to have his own weakness disclosed to him, and who is not prepared also to test what he finds by a standard which is above both writer and reader.—Horace E. Scudder.

[125]

There are living organisms so transparent that we can see their hearts beating and their blood flowing through their glassy tissues. So transparent was the life of Emerson; so clearly did the true nature of the man show through it. What he taught others to be he was himself. His deep and sweet humanity won him love and reverence everywhere among those whose natures were capable of responding to the highest manifestations of character.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Though Emerson had reached a great age, we were not ready to part with him. He was an important friend, companion, kinsman, fellow-citizen, to the last; a wayfarer everybody was glad to meet; one whose enemy none could continue to be; a charmer whose spell was not to be escaped. With his imagination for an eye, Emerson was a perceiver, and he respected perception in himself and others, being as quick and glad to quote their perceptions as to announce his own. He notes, cites, and lauds every scrap of insight, or ripple of tidings over the ocean that heaves from the unknown shore towards which he sails.—Rev. C. A. Bartol.

Emerson’s faith in America is justified whether we trust in the capacities of the individual soul, or whether our expectation grows from the promises of a new civilization. America brings together the races of the world as no nation or time ever did before, and Emerson’s hope for America may yet be justified by a literature in harmony with the new time.—George Willis Cooke.

[126]

Long, long had we heard in India of his name and reputation. We wondered what manner of man he was. When at last I landed on your continent, how glad I should have been to sit at his feet and unfold before him the tale of our woe and degradation! But he had gone to his rest, and instead of touching his warm hand which had blessed so many pilgrims, I could but kiss the cold dust of his nameless grave at the Concord cemetery.—Protap Chunder Mozoomdar.

An Emerson Alphabet.

All right activity is amiable. I never feel that any man occupies my place, but that the reason why I do not have what I wish is, that I want the faculty which entitles. All spiritual or real power makes its own place.—Aristocracy.

Do not spare to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday and experiment; but, above all, good poetry in all kinds, epic, tragedy, lyric.—Education.

[127]

Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What those holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.—Address to Divinity Students.

He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base—and that is the one base thing in the universe—to receive favors and render none.—Compensation.

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite Him to history, or reconcile Him with themselves.—History.

[128]

Let a man control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom be drawn from it.—Prudence.

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall never be the wiser.—Spiritual Laws.

People say sometimes, “See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black events.” Not if they still remind me of the black event.—Circles.

[129]

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints, and gods use a short and positive speech. They are never off their centers. As soon as they swell and paint and find truth not enough for them, softening of the brain has already begun.—The Superlative.

Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants and magnify a few forms?—History.

Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,—a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves.—Woman.

Extract from “Compensation.”

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up-hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of flame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned[130] book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified.

The Concord Fight.

Extract from “Works and Days.”

’Tis a fine fable for the advantage of character over talent, the Greek legend of the strife of Jove and Phœbus. Phœbus challenged the gods and said, “Who will outshoot the far-darting Apollo?” Zeus said, “I will.” Mars shook the lots in his helmet, and that of Apollo leaped out first. Apollo stretched his bow and shot his arrow into the extreme west. Then Zeus arose, and with one stride cleared the whole distance, and said, “Where shall I shoot? There is no space left.” So the bowman’s prize was adjudged to him who drew no bow.

[131]

Art.

The Rhodora.

Born Aug. 29, 1809.

Our Autocrat.

John G. Whittier.

Dec. 3, 1879.

[133]

I think that none of us can understand the meaning and scope of Dr. Holmes’s writings unless we have observed that the main work of his life has been to study and teach an exact science, the noble science of anatomy. And let us honor him to-day, not forgetting, as they can never be forgotten, his poems, his essays, as a noble representative of the profession of the scientific student and teacher.—Charles W. Eliot.

What one does easily is apt to be his forte, though years may pass before he finds this out. Holmes’s early pieces, mostly college-verse, were better of their kind than those of a better kind written in youth by some of his contemporaries. The humbler the type, the sooner the development. The young poet had the aid of a suitable habitat; life at Harvard was the precise thing to bring out his talent. There was nothing of the hermit-thrush in him; his temper was not of the withdrawing and reflective kind, nor moodily introspective,—it throve on fellowship, and he looked to his mates for an audience as readily as they to him for a toast-master.—Frances H. Underwood.

One finds nowhere in Holmes’s volumes crude and unformed thoughts. He writes as clearly as he thinks. His sentences come from his pen clean-cut. The language of his prose is pure classical English. His style is simple, direct, forcible; affluent, in the sense that it apparently never fails to come spontaneously at need, and in the fittest form; but not exuberant to the obscuring of the thought. Whether he be discussing a medical thesis or reading a lyric to classmates and literary friends at an anniversary dinner, or sketching character[134] in the romance, or playing the autocrat at the breakfast-table, it is sure to be found acting effectively on those who hear or read them.—Rev. Ray Palmer.

It is as a writer of humorous poetry that Holmes excels. His non-humorous poems are full of beautiful passages, as we shall see, but they have not the same unique flavor of originality. In one of the great London papers it was editorially stated, not long since, that no contemporary American writer had so amused and instructed the insular mind as Holmes had done. The one most charming feature of his printed and spoken conversation is that he establishes a relation of sympathy between himself and his listeners, by expressing for them those common, every-day thoughts that we all think but rarely say.—Wm. Sloane Kennedy.

The grace and gayety, the pathos and melody, the wit, the earnestness and shrewd sense of his writings, have given Holmes a place, and a sunny place, in the popular heart. On his happy birthday it was not Boston that sat at table, but the whole country. It was not a town meeting, but a national congress. The Autocrat is not a mayor, but an emperor, and the toast of the day was the toast of appreciative hearts and generous souls far beyond the sound of the Atlantic. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table; O king, live forever!”—Geo. Wm. Curtis.

[135]

A Holmes Alphabet.

Flowers will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new. Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.

[136]

It is likely that the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterward if you can, but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form their surface.—The Professor at the Breakfast-table.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a[137] flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change.—The Poet at the Breakfast-table.

[138]

Trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sunshades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet meekness which belongs to huge but limited organisms.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.

“It ain’t jest the thing to grease your ex with ile o’ vitrul,” said the Member.—The Poet at the Breakfast-table.

[139]

Under the Washington Elm, Cambridge.

April 27, 1861.

[140]

The Two Streams.

International Ode.

OUR FATHERS’ LAND.

Sung in unison by twelve hundred children of the public schools, at the visit of the Prince of Wales to Boston, October 18, 1860. Air, “God save the Queen.”

James Russell Lowell’s Birthday Festival.

Born Feb. 27, 1807. Died March 24, 1882.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

William W. Story.

Yes, we were warm friends. He was a delightful man and a great poet. Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, and myself were always friends. There were no jealousies between us, and each took a pride in the work and successes of the other. We would exchange notes upon our productions, and if one saw a kindly notice of the other it was always cut out and sent him.—John G. Whittier.

[143]

The magnetism of Longfellow’s touch lies in the broad humanity of his sympathy which commends his poetry to the universal heart. His artistic sense is so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. Longfellow’s mind takes a simple, childlike hold of life. His delightful familiarity with the pure literature of all languages and times must rank him among the learned poets.—George William Curtis.

It is a singular fact that Longfellow is more popular in England than Tennyson, the laureate. Yet perhaps it is not so very singular. He sings like one whose heart has been warmed at the hearth-stone. There is hardly a line of his but would rhyme with the chirp of the cricket; hearts are hearts whatever blood quickens them, and he has touched the heart as no other poet of his day has. Is there any one whose life is likely to remind us more forcibly of the sublimity of patience, truth, purity, and all the virtues than that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?—Richard Henry Stoddard.

A poetical atmosphere, an aroma, hung about Longfellow as about no other of our poets. He was associated with memories of the early years of the republic; with the picturesque epoch of our national existence; with the dawn of democratic institutions, with the flushing hope which reddened the sky when the young nation committed itself so cordially to faith in man. His name was seldom spoken except in connection with charity and good-will. And when he died, the sorrow of the greatest and of the least was equally sincere.—Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham.

[144]

Can it be that a man like this is dead? I cannot believe it. Like a lark that sings and soars, and still sings fading out of sight in the blue heavens. I cannot believe that he has gone because he has disappeared from our view. A rounded life was his; his work was done. Where has he gone? We may not know as yet. So far as we are concerned, he has gone, to quote his own words, “into the silent land.” We will rejoice that he has left behind him words that will sing their song of trust and hope for many a year to come.—Rev. Minot J. Savage.

A Longfellow Alphabet.

[145]

[146]

[147]

[148]

Musings.

[An early poem, not usually published.]

The City and the Sea.

Loss and Gain.

Charles Sumner.

Born Feb. 22, 1819.

James Russell Lowell.

[HARVARD COMMENCEMENT POEM.]

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

We have been under the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American literature from time to time; and it is with hearty pleasure that we are now able to own that the Britishers have been, for the present, utterly and apparently hopelessly beaten by a Yankee in one important department of poetry. The tyranny of a vulgar public opinion and the charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the shafts of the satirist which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell.—North British Review.

Though eminent and able in many ways, Lowell remains absolutely a poet in feeling. His native genius was fostered by the associations of a singularly beautiful home; nourished by the works of the dramatists, by the ideal pictures of poets and novelists, by the tender solemnity of the discourses of his father, and of Channing and others of his father’s friends. Though he was not a rhyming prodigy like Pope, lisping in numbers, his first effusions as he came to manhood were in poetic form.—Frances H. Underwood.

[153]

Lowell is a remarkable man and poet. That he is one of the first poets of this age, no man will deny. He is sincerely a reformer; his sympathies are entirely with the oppressed and down-trodden. Some of his poems are exceedingly beautiful, while others are full of grand thoughts which strike upon the ear and heart like the booming cannon-shot, which tells that an ardently desired conflict has commenced.—David W. Bartlett.

The most characteristic and most essential happens to be the most salient quality of Mr. Lowell’s style. It is a wit that is as omnipresent and as tireless as electricity itself. The effect is quite indescribable. We are sure that no other equal amount of literature could be produced that would yield to a competent assay a larger net result of pure wit. Generally the spirit of the wit is humane and gracious.—W. C. Wilkinson.

Mr. Lowell says somewhere that the art of writing consists largely in knowing what to leave in the ink-pot. How many volumes of Lowell’s prose works if not in the waste-basket are almost as effectually buried in papers and magazines? What his working life has given to the world will give the reader some notion of what the world has not got, and will serve to call attention to the condensed wealth contained in “Among my Books” and “My Study Windows.”—Rev. H. R. Haweis.

[154]

A Lowell Alphabet.

[155]

[156]

[157]

The First Snow-fall.