FROM THE PREFACE.........Why must we confine the reading of our children to the older literary classics? This is the question asked by an ever-increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish to displace or to discredit the classics. On th ... Read more

FROM THE PREFACE.........Why must we confine the reading of our children to the older literary classics? This is the question asked by an ever-increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish to displace or to discredit the classics. On the contrary, they love and revere them. But they do wish to give their pupils something additional, something that pulses with present life, that is characteristic of today. The children, too, wonder that, with the great literary outpouring going on about them, they must always fill their cups from the cisterns of the past. The short story is especially adapted to supplement our high-school reading. It is of a piece with our varied, hurried, efficient American life, wherein figure the business man’s lunch, the dictagraph, the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and the railway “limited.” It has achieved high art, yet conforms to the modern demand that our literature—since it must be read with despatch, if read at all—be compact and compelling. Moreover, the short story is with us in almost overwhelming numbers, and is probably here to stay. Indeed, our boys and girls are somewhat appalled at the quantity of material from which they must select their reading, and welcome any instruction that enables them to know the good from the bad. It is certain, therefore, that, whatever else they may throw into the educational discard when they leave the high school, they will keep and use anything they may have learned about this form of literature which has become so powerful a factor in our daily life. Less