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diff --git a/75416-0.txt b/75416-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d392eaf --- /dev/null +++ b/75416-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,715 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75416 *** + + + + + + Transcriber’s Note + Italic text displayed as: _italic_ + + + + +Reading with a Purpose + +A Series of Reading Courses + + + 1. BIOLOGY _Vernon Kellogg_ + 2. ENGLISH LITERATURE _W. N. C. Carlton_ + 3. TEN PIVOTAL FIGURES OF HISTORY _Ambrose W. Vernon_ + 4. SOME GREAT AMERICAN BOOKS _Dallas Lore Sharp_ + 6. FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE _Jesse Lee Bennett_ + 7. EARS TO HEAR: A GUIDE FOR MUSIC LOVERS _Daniel Gregory Mason_ + 8. SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS _Howard W. Odum_ + 10. CONFLICTS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION _William Allen White_ + and _Walter E. Myer_ + 11. PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS USE _Everett Dean Martin_ + 13. OUR CHILDREN _M. V. O’Shea_ + + +_Others in Preparation_ + + 5. ECONOMICS _Leon C. Marshall_ + 9. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES _E. E. Slosson_ + 12. PHILOSOPHY _Alexander Meiklejohn_ + 14. RELIGION IN EVERYDAY LIFE _Wilfred T. Grenfell_ + 15. THE LIFE OF CHRIST _Rufus M. Jones_ + + +American Library Association + + + + + Reading with a Purpose + + SOME GREAT + AMERICAN BOOKS + + _By_ + DALLAS LORE SHARP + + [Illustration: Decoration] + + CHICAGO + AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION + 1925 + + + + + COPYRIGHT 1925, BY THE + AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION + + PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1925 + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. + + + + +WHY THIS COURSE IS PUBLISHED + + +This 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. + +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. + + THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION + + + + +THE AUTHOR + + +Dallas Lore Sharp _has won distinction as naturalist, teacher and man +of letters_. + +_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._ + +THE SPIRIT OF THE HIVE _is the latest of his volumes of essays which +include also_ THE HILLS OF HINGHAM, WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON, EDUCATION +IN A DEMOCRACY, THE MAGICAL CHANCE _and others. Mr. Sharp’s name is +especially familiar to readers of the_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY _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.”_ + + + + +SOME GREAT AMERICAN BOOKS + + +Out 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. + +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. + +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 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, + + “And, ere it vanishes + Over the margin, + After it, follow it, + Follow the gleam.” + +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. + +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 _Bible_, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, _Don Quixote_, +_Mother Goose_, _Uncle Remus_, and such books—this is to be on speaking +terms with the learned and cultured of the world. + +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 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. + +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. + +Out of the following twenty-five great American books, for example, +which ten or twelve shall I suggest for reading: _The history +of Plimouth Plantation_; the _Autobiography_ of Jefferson; the +_Autobiography_ of Franklin; Lodge’s _Life of George Washington_; +Tarbell’s _Life of Abraham Lincoln_; _The sketch book_; _Walden_; +_Essays_ of Emerson; _The scarlet letter_; _The pit_; _The rise of +Silas Lapham_; _The gentle reader_ by Dr. Crothers; _Our national +parks_ by John Muir; _Wake-robin_ by John Burroughs; Parkman’s +_Oregon trail_; Dana’s _Two years before the mast_; _Tom Sawyer_; +_The Americanization of Edward Bok_; _Uncle Tom’s cabin_; _The life +and letters of Walter H. Page_; _Uncle Remus_; Bradford’s _Lee the +American_; _The last of the Mohicans_; _Poems_ of Longfellow; Wharton’s +_Ethan Frome_. + +Barely glancing at such a list you will instantly ask: “Why don’t you +include Woodrow Wilson, 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. + +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, _What can literature do for me_, by C. Alphonso Smith. + +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. + +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. + +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 _History of Plimouth Plantation_ are +enough to glorify any time or people. + +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 _Common sense_ and _The crisis_), and orations, like +those by Patrick Henry and James Otis. + +There are two great and simple books, however, belonging here which +are pure literature and worthy of a place among the twelve which +I have chosen: the _Journal_ of the Quaker, John Woolman, and the +_Autobiography_ 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. + +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. + +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 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. _Knickerbocker’s history of New York_ was +published that year, and real literature in America began. Mark that +date in red. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_Wieland_, 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 _Wieland_ or _Edgar Huntley_. + +Washington Irving was our first international writer. With the +publication of + + +THE SKETCH BOOK + +in 1820, a certain Englishman’s contemptuous question “Who reads an +American book?” was forever answered. Everybody read, and still reads, +“Rip Van Winkle”[1] and “The legend of Sleepy Hollow,” two of the +pieces in _The sketch book_. It is for these two stories particularly +that I have chosen _The sketch book_ as the first reading in this +course. + +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. + +“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. + +Comment is unnecessary. Irving is to be read, like 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 _The last of the Mohicans_, then I will +wish I had said _The deerslayer_, the first of the series, of which +_The pathfinder_ and _The pioneers_, and _The prairie_ are the rest. +And if I say one of these tales of the Indians, then I can’t ask you +to read _The pilot_, 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 +_The spy_, which to my thinking, for sheer suspense, for escape, for +pathos, and nobleness of character, beats any other book of adventure I +know. + +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 + + +THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS + +All five of these great tales are five acts in the thrilling drama of +Leatherstocking’s life, the most complete character in literature, +starting as a young hunter in _The deerslayer_ and disappearing +westward, an old man, in _The prairie_, shouldering his gun, calling +his dogs, hitting his last trail. Those five books are our great +American epic. + +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. + +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? + +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 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. + +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.” + +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. + + “Whither, midst falling dew....” + +—but I haven’t room to quote it. Learn it, all of it. 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.” + +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. + +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 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. + +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 + + +AMERICAN POEMS (1625-1892) + +_Edited by W. C. Bronson_ + +and _American poetry_ edited by Percy H. Boynton[2]. 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 _Modern +American poetry_[3]. I hate to leave this subject of poetry, for 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. + +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. + +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 _Tales_, +Hawthorne’s _Twice told tales_, a volume of Bret Harte’s short stories, +Sarah Orne Jewett’s _Deephaven_, or Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s _A humble +romance_. 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 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. + +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 + + +REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN SHORT STORIES + +_Edited by Alexander Jessup_ + +May I put in here a strong word for the essay and suggest that one of +our dozen books be a volume of + + +EMERSON’S ESSAYS + +Here are ten good reasons for my selection: (1) Their sheer beauty of +style; (2) their high moral 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. + +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. + +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 + + +THE SCARLET LETTER + +_By Hawthorne_ + +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. + +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. + +This will have to be done for the next story, William Dean Howells’ + + +THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM + +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 _A study of prose fiction_.[4] And for a text +covering in a brief illuminating way the whole of American literature, +take Bronson’s _Short history of American literature_[5] mentioned +above.[6] + +The next book I will name is Mark Twain’s + + +TOM SAWYER + +though many critics would say _Huckleberry Finn_, while others declare +his _Life on the Mississippi_ the 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. + +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 + + THE PIT + _By Frank Norris_ + +a Chicago story of wheat and the Board of Trade—a terrible tale which +thrills of present-day American life. I see too + + THE GENTLE READER + _By Samuel McChord Crothers_ + +a volume of gentle, whimsical essays, which will be a good test of your +literary taste and appreciation. Along with these stands + + ETHAN FROME + _By Edith Wharton_ + +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 cripples, compelled to live the rest of their lives under +the same roof with the wife from whom Ethan tried to escape. + +And here, finally, is a book published only a few years ago, + + THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE + _By Burton J. Hendrick_ + +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. + +So I might go on until I had named a hundred, and 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. + +But these, together with Bronson’s _Short history of American +literature_, are the twelve which I have chosen for this program: +(1) _The sketch book_ by Irving; (2) _The last of the Mohicans_, a +romantic adventure by Cooper; (3) _American poems (1625-1892)_ edited +by W. C. Bronson; (4) _Representative American short stories_ edited +by Alexander Jessup; (5) the _Essays_ of Emerson (first series will be +good); (6) _The scarlet letter_ by Hawthorne; (7) _The rise of Silas +Lapham_ by Howells; (8) _Tom Sawyer_ by Mark Twain; (9) _The pit_ by +Frank Norris; (10) _The gentle reader_ by Samuel McChord Crothers; (11) +_Ethan Frome_ by Edith Wharton; (12) _The life and letters of Walter H. +Page_ by Burton J. Hendrick. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] This story is found in the volume of _Representative American short +stories_ edited by Alexander Jessup and published by Allyn and Bacon. +See page 25. + +[2] Scribner. + +[3] Harcourt. + +[4] Houghton Mifflin. + +[5] Heath. + +[6] See page 13. + + + + +BOOKS RECOMMENDED IN THIS COURSE + + + THE SKETCH BOOK _Washington Irving_ + + THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS _James Fenimore Cooper_ + + AMERICAN POEMS (1625-1892) _W. C. Bronson_, Ed. + Univ. of Chicago Press, 1912. $2.75 + + REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN SHORT STORIES _Alexander Jessup_, Ed. + Allyn and Bacon, 1923. $4.00 + + ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ + + THE SCARLET LETTER _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ + + THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM _William Dean Howells_ + Houghton, 1885. $2.00 + + THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER _Mark Twain_ + Harper, 1876. $2.25 + + THE PIT _Frank Norris_ + Doubleday, 1903. $0.95 + + THE GENTLE READER _Samuel McChord Crothers_ + Houghton, 1903. $1.75 + + ETHAN FROME _Edith Wharton_ + Scribner, 1911. $1.75 + + THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE _Burton J. Hendrick_ + Doubleday 1922. 2v. $10.00 + + + A SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE _W. C. Bronson_ + Heath, rev. 1919. $1.72 + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75416 *** |