Excerpt from The Step-Ladder: A Collection of Prose and Poetry Designed for Use in Children's Classes in Elocution, and for Supplementary Reading in Public and Private Schools

TO those who are already acquainted with the Emerson system Of teaching reading, the plan of this volume will seem natural and familiar; but the greater number of teachers likely to use the book have probably not studied any particular way Of teaching the subject above the primary grades, and to them is due some explanation of the method to be followed in using the book.

Though the teaching Of primary reading has improved in recent years, in the more advanced grades there seems to be very little improvement in the reading itself so far as expression is con cerned. Some of the trouble arises from a mis taken notion concerning the Object Of teaching oral reading. While, of course, one end of learn ing to read is the acquirement of knowledge through the printed page, the reading-book should not be the medium for teaching mere facts about zoology, botany, or history, or anything else. TO read aloud well the mind must be full of the sub jcet, and roused by its vital interest. Only a few philosophers are quickened by the rattle Of the dry bones of facts.

The reading-book should directly or indirectly give the learner power to grasp and use words, the ability to reproduce fine thoughts through the voice, and to bring the pupil so in touch with great literary minds that their thoughts become his and are reproduced to a third person or a thousand other persons, so that all who hear are made to feel the truths presented.

The object of the present volume is to put in necessary order a collection Of selections which will develop the child's expressive power in natu ral lines, and lead him up to the point where he may use with advantage the Evolution of Expres sion prepared by Dr. Emerson, which this volume is intended to precede, although it may be used independently or in connection with any preferred series of reading-books. But the selections in this book are arranged to follow the general plan of those volumes, they being based on the exact laws of mental development, which must necessarily be If the teacher would quicken the pupil's mind so that it acts freely in any particular line, he must not only know those laws, but their special appli cation to the subject under consideration.

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