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+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Some Great American Books | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
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+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75416 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover">
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter pageborder">
+<p class="center no-indent fs150">Reading with a Purpose</p>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="3">A Series of Reading Courses</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">1.</td>
+<td class="tdl" style="width: 60%"><span class="smcap">Biology</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Vernon Kellogg</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">2.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">English Literature</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>W. N. C. Carlton</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">3.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ten Pivotal Figures of History</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Ambrose W. Vernon</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">4.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Some Great American Books</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Dallas Lore Sharp</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">6.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Frontiers of Knowledge</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Jesse Lee Bennett</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">7.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ears to Hear: A Guide for Music Lovers</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Daniel Gregory Mason</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">8.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Sociology and Social Problems</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Howard W. Odum</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">10.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Conflicts in American Public Opinion</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>William Allen White and Walter E. Myer</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">11.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Psychology and Its Use</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Everett Dean Martin</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">13.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Our Children</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>M. V. O’Shea</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="3"><br><em>Others in Preparation</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">5.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Economics</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Leon C. Marshall</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">9.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Physical Sciences</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>E. E. Slosson</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">12.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Philosophy</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Alexander Meiklejohn</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">14.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Religion in Everyday Life</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Wilfred T. Grenfell</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">15.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Life of Christ</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Rufus M. Jones</em></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120">American Library Association</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter pageborder">
+<p class="center no-indent fs150 wsp">Reading with a Purpose</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%">
+<img src="images/two-bar-top-heavy.jpg" alt="Decoration">
+</div>
+
+<h1>SOME GREAT<br>
+AMERICAN BOOKS</h1>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs150"><em>By</em></p>
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp"><span class="smcap">Dallas Lore Sharp</span></p>
+<br>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp25" id="decoration" style="max-width: 25.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/decoration.jpg" alt="Decoration">
+</figure>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center no-indent fs120">CHICAGO<br>
+<span class="smcap fs90">American Library Association</span><br>
+<span class="fs90">1925</span><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">
+<span class="smcap">Copyright 1925, by the<br>
+American Library Association</span></p>
+<hr class="r5">
+<p class="center no-indent fs80"><span class="smcap">Published August, 1925</span><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs80">PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="WHY_THIS_COURSE_IS">WHY THIS COURSE IS
+PUBLISHED</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">This</span> course has been prepared for men and
+women, and for young people out of school,
+who wish to know more about the literature of
+America. It comprises a very brief introduction to
+the subject and a guide to a few of the best books.
+The books are arranged for consecutive reading.
+They should be available in any general library, or
+may be obtained through any good book store.</p>
+
+<p>A good general knowledge of the subject should
+result from following through the course of reading
+suggested in this booklet—a knowledge greatly superior
+to that of the average citizen. If you wish to
+pursue the subject further, the librarian of your Public
+Library will be glad to make suggestions. If you
+desire to increase your knowledge in other fields, you
+are referred to the other courses in this Reading with
+a Purpose series, and to your Public Library.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">The American Library Association</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_AUTHOR">THE AUTHOR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">Dallas Lore Sharp</span> <em>has won distinction
+as naturalist, teacher and man of letters</em>.</p>
+
+<p><em>As a country-bred boy, a student at Brown
+University, assistant professor and since 1908 professor
+of English at Boston University, for many
+years also farmer and naturalist at his home in the
+hills of Hingham, father, teacher and comrade of four
+boys of his own, his career has developed consistently
+and happily, work and recreation following the same
+path. In his literary labors and teaching he has never
+lost the enthusiasm of the amateur. He is a keen
+observer of nature and human nature and a lifelong
+student, teacher and lover of literature.</em></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Spirit of the Hive</span> <em>is the latest of his volumes
+of essays which include also</em> <span class="smcap">The Hills of Hingham</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Where Rolls the Oregon</span>, <span class="smcap">Education in a Democracy</span>,
+<span class="smcap">The Magical Chance</span> <em>and others. Mr.
+Sharp’s name is especially familiar to readers of the</em>
+<span class="smcap">Atlantic Monthly</span> <em>where many of his essays have
+first appeared. He has been well described as “a man
+who sees the world as eternally new, who sees life as
+eternally young and to whom living is a great
+adventure.”</em></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+<p class="center no-indent fs200 wsp bold">SOME GREAT AMERICAN<br>
+BOOKS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">Out</span> of a hundred great American books,
+which every American ought to know, what
+ten or twelve shall I suggest for this course?
+A difficult question. No two persons would make the
+same selection. Yet no one, I venture, will say that
+those I am taking are not eminently worth while.</p>
+
+<p>But, first, may I make a few suggestions on how
+to read, before I offer advice on what to read? “Not
+how many but how good books” is the secret of being
+well read, according to an ancient saying. But very
+much depends on how well you read those good books.</p>
+
+<p>Put no premium on speed. Don’t dawdle; but take
+your time. Read the great book sympathetically and
+in a leisurely way. Be positive about it. Be aggressive,
+even pugnacious, rather than listless and languishing.
+Read the stirring sections over and over.
+Store them in your memory. Cite them in talk and
+letters—anything to make them yours. Get your
+friends to reading the same things at the same time.
+Associate, if you can, with those who do read. Don’t
+be a literary “soak,” a mere absorber of print. The
+real reader is critical, which means appreciative of
+the good and the poor in a book. He stops to enjoy
+a fine passage in the text as a traveler stops to enjoy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+a lovely scene in the landscape. He is just as ready
+to debate a point with his author also—to hold out
+against him here; to approve and yield the point
+there; and often to forget the book altogether in his
+attempt to follow a gleam which, starting out of some
+illuminating line of the page, goes wavering through
+the twilight of the reader’s dawning thought,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“And, ere it vanishes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Over the margin,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">After it, follow it,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Follow the gleam.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Again, learn to read aloud—not every book, to be
+sure, yet as many of these as you can. There is
+much reading for information and mere pleasure
+which must be done silently and swiftly, and even
+with judicious skipping for the sake of speed. The
+books we are going to read are for pleasure and for
+information and for something even greater—a spiritual
+something, a noble companionship and stimulus
+hard to define, which is as much found in their manner
+as in their matter, or, as we say, in their style. Good
+prose is as full of music as good verse. What is
+sweeter to the hearing ear than the rhythms of prose
+like John Muir’s or Lincoln’s or Poe’s? English is
+a beautiful language, containing the most glorious
+literature ever written. We should revel in its harmonies
+no less than wrestle with its thoughts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p>
+
+<p>There is no invariable answer to the question, how
+to read, any more than to the question, what to read,
+because books are of so many sorts and values, and
+readers are just as diverse. Much reading is required
+for general intelligence. A wide acquaintance with
+good books is about all there is to an education. You
+may have a college diploma or you may not; but if
+you are not a reader, no matter how many degrees
+you may possess, you are not possessed of an education.
+To know the King James Version of the
+<em>Bible</em>, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, <em>Don Quixote</em>,
+<em>Mother Goose</em>, <em>Uncle Remus</em>, and such books—this
+is to be on speaking terms with the learned and cultured
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>We are Americans, and this is a course in American
+books, but we and our books are very much what the
+past, the Old World and its books, has made us.
+Any wide course of reading ought to include the great
+books of that Old World out of which we have come,
+books which all the world loves and has gone to school
+to. The spirit and institutions of our country are
+English, like our language. So true is this that we
+can hardly understand our American mind and customs
+unless we read the history and the literature of
+Old England. The great English authors like Chaucer,
+Spenser, Burns, Wordsworth, Burke, and Dickens
+belong as much to us as to England, and not
+to know them is not to know whence we came and who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+we are in the way of feeling and thought. No time,
+no nation, no book, no man, lives to himself alone,
+or is self-begotten and wholly original.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a required course, and all that I can
+do is to suggest some of the books which have meant
+much to me, and which have a durable place in our
+love and thought. It would be well should I name
+one hundred titles, say, and let you choose. That is
+about all that one can do.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the following twenty-five great American
+books, for example, which ten or twelve shall I suggest
+for reading: <em>The history of Plimouth Plantation</em>;
+the <em>Autobiography</em> of Jefferson; the <em>Autobiography</em>
+of Franklin; Lodge’s <em>Life of George
+Washington</em>; Tarbell’s <em>Life of Abraham Lincoln</em>;
+<em>The sketch book</em>; <em>Walden</em>; <em>Essays</em> of Emerson;
+<em>The scarlet letter</em>; <em>The pit</em>; <em>The rise of Silas Lapham</em>;
+<em>The gentle reader</em> by Dr. Crothers; <em>Our national
+parks</em> by John Muir; <em>Wake-robin</em> by John
+Burroughs; Parkman’s <em>Oregon trail</em>; Dana’s <em>Two
+years before the mast</em>; <em>Tom Sawyer</em>; <em>The Americanization
+of Edward Bok</em>; <em>Uncle Tom’s cabin</em>;
+<em>The life and letters of Walter H. Page</em>; <em>Uncle Remus</em>;
+Bradford’s <em>Lee the American</em>; <em>The last of the
+Mohicans</em>; <em>Poems</em> of Longfellow; Wharton’s <em>Ethan
+Frome</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Barely glancing at such a list you will instantly
+ask: “Why don’t you include Woodrow Wilson,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+Theodore Roosevelt, Anna Howard Shaw, Bryant,
+Whittier, Zane Grey?”—but I must stop you! There
+are so many! Yet if this list I am making for you
+stirs you to make a better one for yourself—then
+that is exactly the best thing it can do for you.</p>
+
+<p>Styles in writing change as do styles in dress, and
+in order to be sympathetic with books not of our own
+day it is necessary often to know something of the
+times in which they were written. So a book on the
+history of American literature, such as W. C. Bronson’s,
+is a good thing to study along with the reading.
+And this book is delightful to read, as is also, <em>What
+can literature do for me</em>, by C. Alphonso Smith.</p>
+
+<p>A convenient way to handle the history of American
+literature is to divide it as the textbooks do into
+three periods: The Colonial from 1607 to 1765;
+the Revolutionary, from 1765 to 1789; and the Period
+of the Republic, from 1789 to the present.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these periods has its own peculiar literature,
+for books reflect not only their writers, but also
+their times. So true is this, that you will find out
+about a nation more accurately from reading its
+stories, poetry and plays, than by studying its records
+and histories. And so, because we are Americans with
+a peculiar history, and a peculiar and a great destiny,
+and because our American books best interpret us to
+ourselves, every American ought to know the outstanding
+books of each of these periods.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+
+<p>The writing of the Colonial Period was for the most
+part crude and imitative. The Pilgrims and Puritans
+were not book-loving people. They were deeply religious
+folk, deeply daring, and masterful, fighting
+with such odds as few men in all history have met and
+conquered. They did original things, but not in
+books with their pens. Yet the famous Mayflower
+Compact and Bradford’s <em>History of Plimouth Plantation</em>
+are enough to glorify any time or people.</p>
+
+<p>Books were not the natural product of the Revolutionary
+Period, either. Men do not fight and write
+at the same time. Nor do they build empires and
+books together. Think of what filled the minds and
+imaginations of the “Founding Fathers” as the late
+President Harding called them—the war with England,
+the dreams of independence, of a new and different
+nation, of vast states lying westward, farms
+and factories, and all the mighty machinery, all the
+wealth required to build and establish their new nation!
+It was a time for much political thinking, a
+time not only for stump pulling, but for stump speaking.
+And as a matter of fact, the best writings of
+this period were letters, like those of Jefferson, and
+political pamphlets, like those of Hamilton and
+Thomas Paine (everybody should read his <em>Common
+sense</em> and <em>The crisis</em>), and orations, like those by
+Patrick Henry and James Otis.</p>
+
+<p>There are two great and simple books, however,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+belonging here which are pure literature and worthy
+of a place among the twelve which I have chosen:
+the <em>Journal</em> of the Quaker, John Woolman, and the
+<em>Autobiography</em> of Benjamin Franklin, the wise man
+of the world. Quakers may be wise, too, but for
+canny wit, common sense, humor, honesty and everything
+else you can think of, especially learning and
+industry, as making up the typical Yankee, you find
+them shaken down and running over in B. Franklin
+of Boston and Philadelphia, and the world, and all
+time. You must read this autobiography, though
+it is not in the list of twelve.</p>
+
+<p>We really find the culture, the leisure, the perspective
+for literary work for the first time in America
+during the Period of the Republic, which follows the
+colonizing, the pioneering, and the fighting. We are
+still a westward-moving people, still on the frontier,
+spreading, multiplying, building, growing rich and
+strong and united. But we are a nation now; the
+spirit of democracy has taken hold on our social life;
+we have a social philosophy, a proud past, a thrilling
+present, and a mighty future. Now we can speak,
+for now we have something to say.</p>
+
+<p>In the year following the adoption of the Constitution,
+when the young nation was getting its breath and
+bearings, our writers multiplied tremendously, especially
+the poets, long-winded, pony-gaited mavericks,
+who should have been hitched to the plow. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+that was the trouble with American literature, everybody
+had been hitched too much to the plow and too
+little to the pen. Yet how could it be otherwise in a
+land so new, so hardly won? But all of this poor
+poetry was a preparation—first, of the minds of the
+people for the greater work to come; and, second, of
+the pens of the masters who were already in training
+and about to come. When a great wave breaks
+crashing on the shore, you know the swell started
+away off at sea. So with every great wave of literature.
+The Golden Age of American letters, beginning
+with Bryant and closing with the death of Oliver
+Wendell Holmes, took its very definite start in the
+tremendous years from 1789 to 1809. But those
+years themselves have left us almost nothing. The
+year 1809, however, is one to remember. <em>Knickerbocker’s
+history of New York</em> was published that
+year, and real literature in America began. Mark
+that date in red.</p>
+
+<p>But meantime if everybody was writing, everybody
+was reading. The spread of the newspaper and
+the birth and growth of the magazine were two of the
+notable literary signs of these early years of the new
+Republic. The people were hungry for reading. The
+whole nation was like a man who has always been
+denied books and pictures and music, and who, at
+thirty-five or forty, wakes up to a keen realization of
+his loss.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<p>The nation had dreamed and dared, had fought and
+plowed and broken trails, had leveled forests, peopled
+prairies, opened mines, built mills and roads, and now
+was pausing to look about and ask what it meant,
+and what it was all to mean. Bread the nation had.
+Now it wanted books. A body it had. But did it
+have a soul? To do and to have—that is first; to
+know, to feel, to be—that is second, but it is an even
+deeper need.</p>
+
+<p>Along with the spread of periodicals came the
+drama, the short story, and the novel. Our first
+professional man of letters, the first American to devote
+all of his time to literary work, Charles Brockden
+Brown, published in 1798 a powerful and terrible
+novel called <em>Wieland</em>, which perhaps should be reckoned
+as the first piece of durable fiction done in our
+country. What a flood has followed it! Brown himself
+did ten such tales. And they are worth reading.
+If you want to feel your hair curl into barbed wire
+on your bare skull, and your spinal column walk off
+and leave the rest of your congealed anatomy, read
+<em>Wieland</em> or <em>Edgar Huntley</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Washington Irving was our first international
+writer. With the publication of</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Sketch Book</span></h3>
+
+<p class="no-indent">in 1820, a certain Englishman’s contemptuous question
+“Who reads an American book?” was forever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+answered. Everybody read, and still reads, “Rip Van
+Winkle”<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and “The legend of Sleepy Hollow,” two
+of the pieces in <em>The sketch book</em>. It is for these two
+stories particularly that I have chosen <em>The sketch
+book</em> as the first reading in this course.</p>
+
+<p>I envy the man who has never read them. He has
+two evenings of pure chuckles in store for him. Shiftless,
+lazy Rip! The dear old toper is as real a person
+as George Washington, and so much more human!
+“There is no finer character-sketch in our literature
+than the lovable old vagabond, as he goes slouching
+through the village, his arms full of children, a troop
+of dogs at his heels, and the shrill pursuing voice of
+Dame Winkle dying away in the distance.” I lived
+long enough ago to see Joseph Jefferson play the
+part of Rip—one of the sinful sweet memories of my
+Methodist youth! Rip made it hard for Mrs. Van
+Winkle, and she made it hard for him—and there is
+much to be said on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>“The legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a twin story of
+the early Dutch settlements along the Hudson, in
+which you will make the acquaintance of another immortal
+character, one schoolmaster by the name of
+Ichabod Crane.</p>
+
+<p>Comment is unnecessary. Irving is to be read, like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+most story-tellers, and enjoyed. If you like his
+poetic, tender, genial, and humorous style there will
+be nothing in this course which you will not enjoy.
+For this is a reading program, not one of study. It
+kills real literature to study it. Take James Fenimore
+Cooper, our first, and still our greatest adventure
+writer, and read—I don’t know which to say of
+the Leatherstocking Tales! If I say <em>The last of the
+Mohicans</em>, then I will wish I had said <em>The deerslayer</em>,
+the first of the series, of which <em>The pathfinder</em> and
+<em>The pioneers</em>, and <em>The prairie</em> are the rest. And if
+I say one of these tales of the Indians, then I can’t
+ask you to read <em>The pilot</em>, one of the best sea stories
+ever written, and one of the first; nor can I tell you
+that you ought, by all means, to read <em>The spy</em>, which
+to my thinking, for sheer suspense, for escape, for
+pathos, and nobleness of character, beats any other
+book of adventure I know.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the vast woods and prairies, the Indian,
+and that early pioneer life of the frontier that Cooper
+does best, and upon which rests his fame. No one
+else will ever again paint for us, on so mighty a canvas,
+with such fresh and splendid colors, the scenes
+of that white-man-red-man time. Read</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Last of the Mohicans</span></h3>
+
+<p>All five of these great tales are five acts in the
+thrilling drama of Leatherstocking’s life, the most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+complete character in literature, starting as a young
+hunter in <em>The deerslayer</em> and disappearing westward,
+an old man, in <em>The prairie</em>, shouldering his gun, calling
+his dogs, hitting his last trail. Those five books
+are our great American epic.</p>
+
+<p>Don’t be over-critical, nor too grown-up in reading
+Cooper. People who get that way die soon. Most
+of them are dead inside already. Cooper is an adventure
+writer, not a novelist of society. He can
+draw a prince of an Indian, and a scout without an
+equal; but you could whittle a better woman, a more
+human one, I mean, out of a hickory stick. Never
+mind his females. You will find enough of them in
+the course of your reading. Be glad that they are
+unnecessary here, and give yourself over to the woods,
+the tracking, and the slaughter. Don’t skip the scenery.
+Cooper’s woods are primeval, deep, shadowy,
+full of shapes and sounds and terrors. There is
+nothing left in the wild, nor to be found in other
+books, so wild as Cooper’s woods.</p>
+
+<p>And don’t be troubled with the goodness of Cooper’s
+Indians. It is the adventure and the scene you
+must get here. Ask yourself where you ever read a
+better story, or anything more tragic, more dramatic,
+more thrilling than the death of Uncas?</p>
+
+<p>Turn now from the novel to a very different reading
+in poetry. Everybody loves a story, and so does
+everybody love poetry—the regular rhythm, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+measured line, the rhyme, the stanza. For these devices
+are older than the mechanics of prose, more elemental,
+and appeal more easily, more directly, to us.
+That is why the oldest literatures are always in verse
+form. It explains why children can read and love
+poetry before they can read prose, and why it is that
+the things we commit to memory, the things quoted
+by a whole nation, and remembered by all the world
+are in verse.</p>
+
+<p>William Cullen Bryant, our first great American
+poet, was born in 1794, five years after Cooper, and
+had he written but his first poem, “Thanatopsis” (it
+was done in his seventeenth year), he would have been
+immortal. That poem (its Greek name means “a
+view of death”), done in blank verse, the old heroic
+line of the Latin and English writers, is one of the
+stateliest, sublimest things ever written, “combining
+the richness of the organ with the freedom of the
+swaying woods and the rolling sea.”</p>
+
+<p>In addition to “Thanatopsis” read “To a waterfowl”
+which most critics pronounce the most perfect
+poem from Bryant’s pen, and which perhaps is as
+nearly “perfect” in its way as any American poem.
+It is to a lone wild duck flying across the fading
+autumnal sky.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">
+“Whither, midst falling dew....”<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">—but I haven’t room to quote it. Learn it, all of it.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+It will almost save your soul. And along with it read
+“A forest hymn,” “The prairies,” “The yellow violet,”
+and “Inscription for the entrance to a wood.”</p>
+
+<p>What shall I do, give you only Bryant out of all
+of our poets? And not let you have John Greenleaf
+Whittier, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or Oliver
+Wendell Holmes—to say nothing of the two greatest
+geniuses of them all, Edgar Allen Poe and Walt
+Whitman! If I could take but one of these I think
+it would be Whittier, because he is the simplest, most
+direct, most homely and American. He is to us what
+Bobby Burns is to Scotland. If there is a single
+American who doesn’t know “Snow bound” and “The
+barefoot boy,” and “Telling the bees,” he ought to be
+given a day in solitary confinement so as to catch up
+with his needs. Whittier was a Quaker, and, consequently,
+a fighter, ardent in his support of the
+Union in the Civil War. His “Barbara Frietchie”
+is the best ballad to come out of that awful conflict.
+We were all on one or the other side in that bitter
+time. There is no side now, thank heaven, but one
+glorious land, one national soul, one literature giving
+it life and form and color.</p>
+
+<p>You will all say, “Why not take Longfellow?” We
+will if you say so. He certainly is America’s favorite
+poet. I remember when he died in 1882. I grew up
+on him. “Tell me not in mournful numbers” must
+have been read to me in my cradle. Read again for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
+this course, “Hymn to the night,” “A psalm of life,”
+“Paul Revere’s ride” (if you cannot already recite
+them from memory); and besides these, you should
+read “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” two of our long
+poems, one a story, the other an allegorical interpretation
+of the Indian, which are as fresh today as
+on the day they were published.</p>
+
+<p>By asking you to read so many poems from so
+many poets I have made the exclusive selection of one
+poet’s work impossible. I am going to escape by
+taking a collection of the best of all of them. There
+are any number of good American anthologies, such
+as</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">American Poems</span> (1625-1892)</h3>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Edited by W. C. Bronson</em></p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">and <em>American poetry</em> edited by Percy H. Boynton<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>.
+Both of these books have good notes and I am recommending
+the Bronson because I happen to be better
+acquainted with it, and because I think its notes fit
+very well into this reading scheme. This collection
+does not include any of our recent poetry, which
+is really in a class by itself and can best be had in
+such anthologies as Untermeyer’s <em>Modern American
+poetry</em><a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>. I hate to leave this subject of poetry, for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+I have left unmentioned the three most original, most
+daring, most gifted of them all, Whitman, Emerson
+and Poe. I will take just space enough to mention
+two poems of each of these that everyone should know:
+“The problem” and “Days” by Emerson; “The
+haunted palace” and “The conqueror worm” by Poe;
+“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” and “Come
+up from the fields, Father” by Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>But I must now suggest a volume of short stories.
+Which volume? The short story as a literary form,
+in theory and conscious art, anyway, was invented
+by Edgar Allen Poe. He set a model for all time,
+and few, if any, of those who have followed him have
+equaled him in his own peculiar field. For there are
+many varieties of short stories that have been developed
+since Poe staked out the short-story claim.
+And as for short-story writers, they are as thick as
+fleas.</p>
+
+<p>As part of the object of this course is to scrape a
+small acquaintance with American literature, as well
+as to have a good time reading, I am going to suggest
+that you take your choice of Poe’s <em>Tales</em>, Hawthorne’s
+<em>Twice told tales</em>, a volume of Bret Harte’s
+short stories, Sarah Orne Jewett’s <em>Deephaven</em>, or
+Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s <em>A humble romance</em>. A
+still better scheme would be to read one or two of the
+best from each of these authors, as well as others
+among our story writers. Suppose we take “The fall<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>
+of the house of Usher” by Poe; “The ambitious guest”
+by Hawthorne; “The outcasts of Poker Flat” by
+Harte; “A New England nun” by Mrs. Freeman;
+“A man without a country” by Edward Everett Hale,
+and “Posson Jone” by George W. Cable. They will
+be equal in bulk to a fair volume, and equal in thrill
+and fun to all winter at the movies.</p>
+
+<p>No two of these are the least alike. If I had named
+one of O. Henry’s, like “The gift of the Magi,” that
+would still be different. O. Henry is the shortest of
+short-story writers. From the slow discursive sketch
+of Irving to the crisp brief incident, with the unexpected
+turn at the end, as invented by “O. Henry”
+(William Sydney Porter was his human name), runs
+the short story, and represents the most highly developed,
+most artistic of literary prose forms. These
+that I have named and many more can be had in the
+single volume</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Representative American Short Stories</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Edited by Alexander Jessup</em></p>
+
+<p>May I put in here a strong word for the essay and
+suggest that one of our dozen books be a volume of</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Emerson’s Essays</span></h3>
+
+<p>Here are ten good reasons for my selection:
+(1) Their sheer beauty of style; (2) their high moral<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
+quality; (3) their eloquent majesty of thought; (4)
+their pithy rememberable sayings; (5) their richness
+of suggestion; (6) their stimulus to higher thought
+and purer feelings; (7) their doctrine of individualism;
+(8) their appeal for simple living; (9) their
+universality; (10) their elemental themes.</p>
+
+<p>You will not find them dry or hard or lacking in
+direct appeal. They will challenge you. They will
+blow through your thinking as a pure cold current of
+mountain air blows through the fevered atmosphere
+of a sick room. The essay, among all our literary
+forms, with the exception of the letter, is the most
+direct, most personal, best adapted for information
+and persuasion. Nor is it, when handled by a master,
+less satisfying artistically than story or poetry.</p>
+
+<p>We have had the novel of adventure in Cooper,
+purely romantic as against the realistic. In this
+same realm, but dealing with utterly different material,
+is</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Scarlet Letter</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>By Hawthorne</em></p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a tragedy of sin, an epic of the soul. To Hawthorne
+the supernatural was as real as nature itself; good
+and evil, inner and outer, are in constant conflict
+throughout his pages. The scarlet letter Hester
+wears is a symbol, and symbolism is the key to Hawthorne’s
+method and meaning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<p>As a preparation for this novel one ought to recall
+the spirit of the old colonial times in New England,
+the deep religiousness, the belief in witches, and the
+vivid sense of the supernatural. In order to enjoy
+any story one must understand its background, must
+be able to get out of his own day, away from his own
+customs, back to the life of the story, as if he were
+a very part of it.</p>
+
+<p>This will have to be done for the next story,
+William Dean Howells’</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Rise of Silas Lapham</span></h3>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a realistic novel of the manners and ambitions of
+Boston society some forty years ago. For a good
+study of realism and romanticism in fiction, in fact
+for a good study of this whole art of the novel, get
+Professor Bliss Perry’s <em>A study of prose fiction</em>.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> And
+for a text covering in a brief illuminating way the
+whole of American literature, take Bronson’s <em>Short
+history of American literature</em><a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> mentioned above.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>The next book I will name is Mark Twain’s</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Tom Sawyer</span></h3>
+
+<p class="no-indent">though many critics would say <em>Huckleberry Finn</em>,
+while others declare his <em>Life on the Mississippi</em> the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
+greatest of the three, and one of the permanent things
+in American literature. They are really three in a
+great trilogy—the story of his own life in the Mississippi
+Valley, of a time now gone but which still has
+mightily to do with the times that now are, and that
+are to be.</p>
+
+<p>Before closing this short list, may I be allowed to
+hold open the door to the library a moment longer,
+just to glance at a few more titles? There I see</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Pit</span></h3>
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>By Frank Norris</em><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a Chicago story of wheat and the Board of Trade—a
+terrible tale which thrills of present-day American
+life. I see too</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Gentle Reader</span></h3>
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>By Samuel McChord Crothers</em><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a volume of gentle, whimsical essays, which will be a
+good test of your literary taste and appreciation.
+Along with these stands</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Ethan Frome</span></h3>
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>By Edith Wharton</em><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a grim tale of inner torture against a bare New England
+background—two lovers who tried to die together
+but who only succeeded in making themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+cripples, compelled to live the rest of their lives under
+the same roof with the wife from whom Ethan tried
+to escape.</p>
+
+<p>And here, finally, is a book published only a few
+years ago,</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page</span></h3>
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>By Burton J. Hendrick</em></p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">a biography but more than a biography, for it gives
+not only a rich and illuminating life-story of our
+ambassador to England during the World War but
+an account, at the same time graphic and intimate,
+of the world-important events in which he played a
+vital part. Many of the letters are no less than a
+revelation of Anglo-American relations leading up to
+the entry of the United States into the war and of
+the influence of certain men—President Wilson, Colonel
+House, Lord Grey, Balfour and others—upon
+those relations. The work of Mr. Hendrick in the
+biography proper and in the connecting links between
+the letters (a small proportion of the whole
+book) is ably done but it is the letters themselves,
+with their vigor, their humor, their charm of style,
+that win for this book a place among biographies
+which are also literature—and thus a place in this
+course.</p>
+
+<p>So I might go on until I had named a hundred, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+more than a hundred great American books, all of
+them marked by both durable matter and manner,
+books that not only get hold of the mind and heart,
+but which also reveal to us glimpses of the past and
+dreams of what the future of America shall be.</p>
+
+<p>But these, together with Bronson’s <em>Short history
+of American literature</em>, are the twelve which I have
+chosen for this program: (1) <em>The sketch book</em> by
+Irving; (2) <em>The last of the Mohicans</em>, a romantic
+adventure by Cooper; (3) <em>American poems (1625-1892)</em>
+edited by W. C. Bronson; (4) <em>Representative
+American short stories</em> edited by Alexander Jessup;
+(5) the <em>Essays</em> of Emerson (first series will be good);
+(6) <em>The scarlet letter</em> by Hawthorne; (7) <em>The rise
+of Silas Lapham</em> by Howells; (8) <em>Tom Sawyer</em> by
+Mark Twain; (9) <em>The pit</em> by Frank Norris; (10)
+<em>The gentle reader</em> by Samuel McChord Crothers;
+(11) <em>Ethan Frome</em> by Edith Wharton; (12) <em>The
+life and letters of Walter H. Page</em> by Burton J. Hendrick.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> This story is found in the volume of <cite>Representative American
+short stories</cite> edited by Alexander Jessup and published
+by Allyn and Bacon. See page <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Scribner.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Harcourt.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Houghton Mifflin.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Heath.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> See page <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs150 bold">BOOKS RECOMMENDED IN
+THIS COURSE</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%">
+<img src="images/two-bar-top-heavy.jpg" alt="Decoration">
+</div>
+
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Sketch Book</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Washington Irving</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Last of the Mohicans</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>James Fenimore Cooper</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">American Poems</span> (1625-1892)</td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>W. C. Bronson</em>, Ed.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Univ. of Chicago Press, 1912. $2.75</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Representative American Short Stories</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Alexander Jessup</em>, Ed.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Allyn and Bacon, 1923. $4.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Essays, First Series</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Ralph Waldo Emerson</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Scarlet Letter</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Nathaniel Hawthorne</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Rise of Silas Lapham</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>William Dean Howells</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Houghton, 1885. $2.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Mark Twain</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Harper, 1876. $2.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Pit</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Frank Norris</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Doubleday, 1903. $0.95</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Gentle Reader</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Samuel McChord Crothers</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Houghton, 1903. $1.75</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ethan Frome</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Edith Wharton</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Scribner, 1911. $1.75</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>Burton J. Hendrick</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80 bb" colspan="2">Doubleday 1922. 2v. $10.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Short History of American Literature</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><em>W. C. Bronson</em></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc fs80" colspan="2">Heath, rev. 1919. $1.72</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75416 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-19 16:21:22 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-19 16:21:22 -0800
commit	8280fa250eaa6be17fe97dee6174bf1f026eadb7 (patch)
tree	fa0ee693be7196e61bf41117e7635ca49fc6c410 /75416-h