Chapter III: Part 3

Much the same thing might be said of the drawing of a moral, except that it is not easy to speak with patience of those often well-meaning but gravely mistaken pedagogues who seem bound to impress upon their scholars that literature is didactic. In so far as a book is deliberately didactic, it is not literature. It may be artistic in spite of its enforcing a deliberate lesson, but never because of this. My own instinct would be, and I am consistent enough to make it pretty generally my practice, to conceal from a class as well as I can any deliberate drawing of morals into which a writer of genius may have fallen. It is like the fault of a friend, and is to be screened from the public as far as honesty will permit. Certainly it should never be paraded before the young, who will not reason about the matter, but are too wholesome by nature and too near to primitive human conditions not to distrust an offering of intellectual jelly which obviously contains a moral pill.

Morals are as a rule drawn by teachers who feel that they must teach something, and something tangible. They themselves lack the conception of any office of art higher than moralizing, and they deal with literature accordingly. They are unable to appreciate the fact that the most effective influence which can be brought to bear upon the human mind is never the direct teaching of the preacher or the moralizer, but the indirect instruction of events and emotions. Personally I have sufficient modesty, moreover, to make me hesitate to assume that I can judge better than a master artist how far it is well to go in drawing a moral. If the man of genius has chosen not to point to a deliberate lesson, I am far from feeling inclined to take the ground that I know better, and that the sermon should be there. When Shakespeare, or Coleridge, or Browning feels that a vivid transcript of life should be left to work out its own effect, far from me be the presumption to consider the poet wrong, or to try to piece out his magnificent work with trite moralizing.

The tendency to abuse children with morals is as vicious as it is widespread. It is perhaps not unconnected with the idea that instruction and improvement must alike come through means not in themselves enjoyable. It is the principle upon which an old New England country wife rates the efficacy of a drug by its bitterness. We all find it hard to realize that as far as literature, at least, is concerned, the good it does is to be measured rather by the pleasure it gives. If the children entirely and intelligently delight in it, we need bother about no morals, we need—as far as the question of its value in the training of the child's mind goes—have no concern about examinations. Art is the ministry of joy, and literature is art or it is the most futile and foolish thing ever introduced into the training of the young.

VI

PRELIMINARY WORK

It will not always do to plunge at once into a given piece of literature, for often a certain amount of preliminary work is needed to prepare the mind of the pupil to receive the effect intended by the author. For convenience I should divide the teaching of literature into four stages:

Preliminary;
Inspirational;
Educational;
Examinational.

The division is of course arbitrary, but it is after all one which comes naturally enough in actual work. One division will not infrequently pass into another, and no one could be so foolish as to suppose literature is to be taught by a cut and dried mechanical process of any sort. The division is convenient, however, at least for purposes of discussion; and no argument should be needed to prove that in many cases the pupil cannot even read intelligently the literature he is supposed to study until he has had some preparatory instruction.

The vocabulary of any particular work must first be taken into account. We do not ask a child to read a poem until we suppose him to have by every-day use become familiar with the common words it contains. We should remember that the poet in writing has assumed that the reader is equally familiar with any less common words which may be used. It is certainly not to be held that the writer intends that in the middle of a flowing line or at a point where the emotion is at its highest, the reader shall be bothered by ignorance of the meaning of a term; that he shall be obliged to turn to notes to look up definitions, shall be plunged into a puddle of derivations, allied meanings, and parallel passages such as are so often prepared by the ingenious editors of school texts. These things are well enough in their place and way; but no author ever intended his work to be read by any such process, and since literature depends so largely on the production of a mood, such interruptions are nothing less than fatal to the effect.

I remember as a boy sitting at the feet of an elder sister who was reading to me in English from a French text. At the very climax of the tale, when the heroine was being pursued down a wild ravine by a bandit, the reader came to an adjective which she could not translate. With true New England conscientiousness she began to look it up in the dictionary; but I could not bear the delay. I caught the lexicon out of her hands, and without having even seen the French or knowing a syllable of that language, cried out: "Oh, I know that word! It means 'blood-boltered.' Did he catch her?" She abandoned the search, and in all the horror of the picturesque Shakespearean epithet the bandit dashed on, to be encountered by the hero at the next turn of the romantic ravine. I had at the moment, so far as I can remember, no consideration of the exact truth of my statement. I simply could not bear that the emotion of the crisis should be interrupted by that bothersome search for an exact equivalent. The term 'blood-boltered' fitted the situation admirably, and I thrust it in, so that we might hurry forward on the rushing current of excitement. This, as I understand it, is the fashion in which children should take literature. Few occasions, perhaps, are likely to call for epithets so lurid as that in which Macbeth described the ghost of Banquo, but the spirit of the thing read should so carry the reader forward that he cannot endure interruption.

When work must be done with glossary and notes in order that the text may be easily and properly understood, this should be taken as straightforward preliminary study. It should be made as agreeable as possible, but agreeable for and in itself. When I say agreeable for itself, I mean without especial reference to the text for which preparation is being made. The history of words, the growth and modification of meanings, the peculiarities and relations of speech, may always be made attractive to an intelligent class; and since here and throughout all study of literature students are to be made to do as much of the actual work as possible, this part is simple.

The amount of time given to such learning of the vocabulary might at first seem to be an objection to the method. In the first place, however, there is an actual economy of time in doing all this at first and at once, thus getting it out of the way, and saving the waste of constant interruptions in going over the text; in the second, it affords a means of making this portion of the work actually interesting in itself and valuable for its relation to the study of language in general; and in the third place it both fixes meanings in mind and allows the reading of the author with some sense of the effect he designed to give by the words he employed.

It is hardly necessary to say that in this matter of taking up the vocabulary beforehand many teachers, perhaps even most teachers, will not agree with me. The other side of the question is very well put in a leaflet by Miss Mary E. Litchfield, published by the New England Association of Teachers in English:

My pupils, I find, can work longer and harder on "Macbeth" and
"Hamlet," with constantly increasing interest, than on any
other masterpieces suited to school use. Just because these
dramas are so stimulating, the pupils have the patience to
struggle with the difficulties of the text. In general they
feel only a languid interest in word-puzzles such as delight
the student of language; for instance, the expression, "He
doesn't know a hawk from a handsaw," might fail to arouse their
curiosity. But when Hamlet says: "I am but mad north-north
west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw,"
they are on the alert; they really care to know what he means
and why he has used this peculiar expression. Thus word-study
which might be mere drudgery is rendered interesting by the
human element in the play—the element which, in my opinion,
should always be kept well in the foreground.

A large number of teachers, many of them, very likely, of experience greater than mine, will agree with this view. I am not able to do so because I believe we should know the language before we try to read; but I at least hold that the first principle in any successful teaching is that a teacher shall follow the method which he finds best adapted to his own temperament. For the instructor who is convinced that the habit of taking up difficulties of language as they are met in actual reading, to take them up then is perhaps the only effective way of doing things. It seems to me, however, a little like sacrificing the literature to a desire to make teaching the vocabulary easier. It is very likely a simpler way of arousing interest in difficulties of language; but in teaching literature the elucidation of obscure words and phrases is of interest or value simply for the sake of the effect of the text, and I hold that to this effect, and to this effect as a whole, everything else should be subordinate. Each teacher must decide for himself what is the proper method, but I insist that no author ever wrote sincerely without assuming that his vocabulary was familiar to his audience beforehand. Certainly I am not able to feel that it is wise to interrupt any first reading with anything save perhaps the briefest possible explanations, comments that are so short as not to break the flow of the work as a whole.

The first reading of a narrative of any sort, it may surely be said, is chiefly a matter of making the reader, and especially the childish reader, acquainted with the story. Since little real study can be accomplished while interest is concentrated on the plot, it may be wise for the teacher to have a first reading without any more attention to the difficulties of vocabulary than is absolutely needed to make the story intelligible, and then to have the difficulties learned before a second and more intelligent going over of the work as a whole. Each teacher must decide a point of this sort according to individual judgment and the character of the class.

In all the lower grades of school work whatever literature is given to the children should be in diction and in phrasing so simple that very little of this sort of preliminary work need be done. So long as what is selected has real literary excellence it can hardly be too simple. We constantly forget, it seems to me, how simple is the world of children. Dr. John Brown, dear and wise soul, has justly said:

Children are long in seeing, or at least in looking at what is
above them; they like the ground, and its flowers and stones,
its "red sodgers" and lady-birds, and all its queer things;
_their world is about three feet high_, and they are more often
stooping than gazing up.

It does not follow that children are to be fed on that sort of water-gruel which is so often vended as "juvenile literature." They should be given the best, the work of real writers; but of this the simplest should be chosen, and in dealing with it the children should not be bothered with thoughts and ideas which are over their heads. They live, it must be remembered, in a "world about three feet high," mentally as well as physically.

In preliminary work the first object is to remove whatever obstacles might hinder ease and smoothness of progress in reading. Beside having all obscure terms understood, it is well to call attention to some of the most striking and beautiful passages in the book or poem which is to be read. They should be taken up as detached quotations, and the pupils made to discover or to see how and why each is good. The pleasure of coming upon them when the text is read helps in itself; it diminishes the strain upon the mind of the student in the effort of comprehension, and it doubles the effect of the portions chosen. My idea is that many fine passages may be treated almost as a part of the vocabulary of the text; their meaning and force may be made so evident and so attractive that when the complete play or poem is taken up a knowledge of these bits helps greatly in securing a strong effect of the work as a whole.

We teachers too often ignore, it is to be feared, the strain it is to the young to understand and to feel at the same time. We fail to recognize, indeed, how difficult it is for them—or for any one—to _feel_ while the attention is taxed to take in the meaning of a thing; so that in literary study we are likely to demand the impossible, the responsiveness of the emotions while all the force of the child's mind is concentrated upon the effort to comprehend. Whatever may be done legitimately to lessen this stress is most desirable. The preparation of the vocabulary, the elucidation of obscure passages obviously aids in this; but so does the pointing out of beauties. Instead of being bothered in the midst of the effort to take in a poem or a play as a whole and being harassed by the need of mastering details of diction or phrasing, the student has a pleasant sense of self-confidence in coming upon obscure matters already conquered; and in the same way receives both pleasure and a feeling of mastery in recognizing beauties already familiar.

The preliminary work, besides this study of any difficulties of vocabulary, should include whatever is needful in making clear any difference between the point of view of the work studied and that of the child's ordinary life.

In "The Merchant of Venice," for instance, it is necessary to make clear the fact that the play was written for an audience to which usury was an intolerable crime and a Jew a creature to be thoroughly detested. The Jew-baiting of recent years in Europe helps to make this intelligible. The point must be made, because otherwise Antonio appears like a cad and Jessica inexcusable. The story is easily brought home to the school-boy, moreover, by its close relation to the simplest emotions.

The two facts that Antonio has incurred the hatred of Shylock through his kindness to persons in trouble and that he comes within the range of danger through raising money to aid his friend Bassanio are so closely allied to universal human feelings and universal human experience that it is only needful to be sure these points are clearly perceived to have the sympathies of the class thoroughly awakened. All this is so obvious that it is hardly necessary to say it except for the sake of not omitting what is of so much real importance. Every teacher understands this and acts upon it.

To include this in the preliminary work may seem a contradiction of a previous statement that it is not wise to tell children what they are expected to get from any given book. The two matters are entirely distinct. What should be done is really that sort of giving of the point of view which we so commonly and so naturally exercise in telling an anecdote in conversation. "Of all conceited men I ever met," we say, "Tom Brandywine was the worst. Why, once I saw him"—and so on for the story which is thus declared to be an exposition of overweening vanity. "See," we say to the class in effect, "you must have felt sorry to see some kindly, honest fellow cheated just because he was too honest to suspect the sneak that cheated him. Here is the story of a great, splendid, honest Moor, a noble general and a fine leader, who was utterly ruined and brought to his death in just that way." This is not drawing a moral, and it seems to me entirely legitimate aid to the student. It is less doing anything for them that they could and should do than it is directing them so that they may advance more quickly and in the right direction.

This indication of the general direction in which the mind should move in considering a work is closely connected with what might be called establishing the proper point of departure. This is neither more nor less than fixing the fact of common experience in the life of the pupil at which it seems safe and wise to begin. What has been said about the way in which a teacher calls upon the experience of the pupils to bring home the picture of the Village Blacksmith at his forge is an indication of what is here meant. In teaching history to-day, with a somewhat older grade of pupils than would be reading that poem of Longfellow's, an instructor naturally makes vivid the Massacre of St. Bartholomew by comparison with the reports of Jewish massacres in our own time; and in the same line the fact that it is so short a time since the King of Servia was assassinated, or that the present Sultan of Turkey cemented on his crown with the blood of his brothers, may be made to assist a class to take the point of view necessary for the realization of the tragedy in "Macbeth." I have already spoken[83:1] of the humbler, but perhaps even more vital way in which the vice of ambition that is so strong a motive power in that tragedy is to be understood by starting from the rivalry in sports, since from this so surely intelligible emotion the mind of the boy is easily led on to the ambition which burns to rule a kingdom. It is wise not to be afraid of the simple. If the poem to be studied is "The Ancient Mariner," it is well to discover what is the strangest situation in which any member of the class has ever found himself. After inciting the rest of the pupils to imagine what must be one's feelings in such circumstances, it is not difficult to lead them on to understand the declaration of Coleridge that he tried to show how a man would feel if the supernatural were actual.

For natural, wholesome-minded children it is not in the least necessary to take pains to reconcile them to the supernatural. To the normal child the line between the actual and the unreal does not exist until this has been drilled into him by adult teaching, conscious or unconscious. The normal condition of youth is that which accepts a fairy as simply and as unquestioningly as it accepts a tree or a cow. Certainly it is true that children are in general ready enough for what they would call "make-believe," that stage of half-conscious self-deception which lies between the blessed imaginative faith of unsophisticated childhood and the more skeptical attitude of those who have discovered that "there isn't any Santa Claus." For all younger classes nothing more is likely to be necessary than to assume that the wonderful will be accepted.

When occasion arises to justify the marvellous, the teacher may always call attention to the fact that in poems like "The Ancient Mariner," or "Comus," or "Macbeth" the supernatural is a part of the hypothesis. To connect with this the pupil's conception of the part the hypothesis plays in a proposition in geometry is at once to help to connect one branch of study with another, always a desirable thing in education, and to aid them in understanding why and how they are to accept the wonders of the story entirely without question. The impossible is part of the proposition, and this they must be made to feel before they can be at ease with their author or get at all the proper point of view.

The aim of literature is to arouse emotion, but we live in a realistic age, and the youth of the present is not given to the emotional. Youth, moreover, instinctively conceals feeling, and the lads in our school-classes to-day are in their outside lives and indeed in most of their school-work called upon to be as hard-headed and as unemotional as possible. They are likely to feel that emotion is weak, that to be moved is effeminate. They will shy at any statement that they should feel what they read. The notion of conceiving an hypothesis helps just here. A boy will accept—not entirely reasoning the thing out, but really making of it an excuse to himself for being moved—the idea that if the hypothesis were true he might feel deeply, although he assures himself that as it is he is actually stable in a manly indifference. The aim of the teacher is to awake feeling, but not to speak of it; to touch the class as deeply as possible, yet not to seem aware, or at least not to show that he is aware that the students are touched.

In this as in all treatment of literature, any connection with the actual life of the pupil is of the greatest value. It seems to justify emotion, and it gives to the work of imagination a certain solidity. Without reasoning the thing out fully, a boy of the present day is likely to judge the importance of anything presented to him at school by what he can see of its direct bearing upon his future work, and especially by its relations to the material side of life. This is even measurably true of children so young that they might be supposed still to be ignorant of the realism of the time and of the practical side of existence. The teacher best evades this danger by starting directly from some thought or fact in the child's present life and from this leading him on to the mood of the work of literature which is under consideration.

Here and everywhere I feel the danger of seeming to be recommending mechanical processes for that which no mechanical process can reach. If the teacher has a sympathetic love for literature, he will understand that I do not and cannot mean anything of the sort; if he has not that sympathy, he cannot treat literature otherwise than in a machine fashion, no matter what is said. It sometimes seems that it is hardly logical to expect every teacher to be an instructor in literature any more than it would be to ask every teacher to take classes in music and painting. Art requires not only knowledge but temperament; both master and pupil must have a responsiveness to the imaginative, or little can be accomplished. Since the exigencies of our present system, however, require that so large a proportion of teachers shall make the attempt, I am simply endeavoring to give practical hints which may aid in the work; but I wish to keep plainly evident the fact that nowhere do I mean to imply a patent process, a mechanical method, or anything which is of value except as it is applied with a full comprehension that the chief thing, the thing to which any method is to be at need completely sacrificed, is to awaken appreciation and enthusiasm, to quicken the imagination of the student, and to develop whatever natural powers he may have for the enjoying and the loving of good books.[87:1]

FOOTNOTES:

[83:1] Page 69.

[87:1] While this volume was in press a writer in the _Monthly Review_ (London) has remarked: "I fail to see how a literary sense can be cultivated until a firm foundation of knowledge has been laid whereon to build, and I tremble to think of the result of an enforced diet of 'The Canterbury Tales,' 'The Faerie Queen,' and 'Marmion' upon a class as yet ignorant of the elements of English composition."

VII

THE INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE

The term "inspirational," which I have used as indicating the second division of the teaching of literature, is a somewhat absurdly large word for what is the most simple and natural part of the whole dealing with books which goes on between teacher and pupil. It is a term, however, which expresses pretty well what is or should be the exact character of the study at its best. The chief effect of literature should be to inspire, and by "inspirational," as applied to teaching, I mean that presentation of literature which best secures this end.

Put in simpler terms the whole matter might be expressed by saying that the most important office of literature in the school as in life is to minister to delight and to enthusiasm; and whoever is familiar with the limited extent to which the required training in college requirements or in prescribed courses fulfils this office will realize the need which exists for the emphasizing of this view of the matter. Literature is made a gymnasium for the training of the intellect or a treadmill for the exercise of the memory, but it is too seldom that delight which it must be to accomplish its highest uses.

That the secondary schools should be chiefly concerned with this phase of literature seems to me a truth so obvious and so indisputable that I can see only with astonishment that it is so generally ignored. In the lower grades, it is true, something is done in the way of letting children enjoy literature without bothering about didactic meanings, history of authors, philological instances, critical manipulations, and all the devices with which later the masterpieces of genius are turned into bugbears; but even here too many teachers feel an innate craving to draw morals and to make poetry instructive. They seem to forget that as children themselves they skipped the moral when they read a story, or at best received it as an uninteresting necessity, like the core of an apple, to be discarded when from it had been gleaned all the sweets of the tale. Nothing is more amazing than the extent to which all we teachers, in varying degrees, but universally, even to the best of us, go on dealing with a sort of imaginary child which from our own experience we know never did and never could exist. The first great secret of all teaching is to recognize that we must deal with our pupils as if we were dealing with our own selves at their age. If we can accomplish this, we shall not bore them with dull moralizings under the pretext that we are introducing them to the delights of literature.

Where a class has to be dealt with, the work in any branch must be adapted to the average mind, and not to the understanding of the individual; so that in school many things are impossible which at home, or in individual training, are not difficult. It is not hard, I believe, to interest even the average modern boy, distracted by the multiplicity of current impressions, in the best literature, provided he may be taken alone and competently handled. Almost any wholesome and sane lad may at times be found to be indifferent in class to the plays of Shakespeare, for instance; yet I believe few healthy and fairly intelligent boys of from ten to fifteen could resist the fascination of the plays if these were read with them by a competent person at proper times, and without the dilution of mental perception which necessarily comes with the presence of classmates. Be this, however, as it may, the teacher must be content with arousing as well as he can the spirit of the class as a whole. Some one or two of the cleverest pupils will lead, and may seem to represent the spirit of all; but even they are not what they would be alone, and in any case the instructor must not devote himself to the most clever while the rest of the pupils are neglected.

It follows that in the choice of pieces to be read to students the first thing to be considered is that these shall be effective in a broad sense so that they will appeal to the average intelligence and taste of a given class easily and naturally. They must first of all have that strong appeal to general human emotion which will insure a ready response from youth not well developed æsthetically and rendered less sensitive by being massed with other students in a class. Such a selection is not easy, and it involves the careful study of what may be termed the individuality of any given group of pupils; but it seems to me to be at once one of the most obvious and one of the most important of the points which should be considered in the beginning of any attempt to create in school a real enjoyment in literature.

A danger which naturally presents itself at the very outset is the likelihood of forgetting that the possession of this easy and obvious interest is not a sufficient reason why a work should be presented to a class. It too often happens that the desire of arousing and interesting pupils leads teachers to bring forward things that are sensational and have little if any further recommendation. Doubtless Dr. Johnson was right when he declared that "you have done a great thing when you have brought a boy to have entertainment from a book;" yet after all the teacher is not advancing in his task and may be doing positive harm if he sacrifice too much to the desire to be instantly and strongly pleasing. Flashy and unworthy books are so pressed upon the reading public at the present day that especial care is needed to avoid fostering the tendency to receive them in place of literature.

It is not my purpose to give lists of selections, for in the first place it has been done over and over, notably in such a collection as the admirable "Heart of Oak" series; and in the second no selection can be held to be equally adapted to different classes or to have real value unless it has been made with a view to the actual needs of a definite body of pupils. Pupils must be interested, yet the things chosen to arouse their interest should be those which have not only the superficial qualities which make an instant appeal, but possess also those more lasting merits essential to genuine literature.

In the lower grades it is generally, I believe, possible for the teacher to control the choice of selections put before students, although even here this is not always the case. If errors of selection are made, however, they are largely due to inability to judge wisely and to a too great deference to general literary taste. A teacher must remember that two points are absolutely essential to any good teaching of literature: first, that the selection be suited to the possibilities of the individual class; second, that the teacher be qualified so to use and present the selection as to make it effective. Many conscientious teachers take poems which they know are regarded as of high merit, and which have been used with advantage by other instructors, yet which they individually, from temperament or from training, are utterly inadequate to handle. They either lack the insight and delight in the pieces which are essential if the pupils are to be kindled, or are deficient in power so to present their own appreciation and enjoyment that these appeal to the children.

For illustration of one of the ways in which a child may be led into the heart of a poem I have chosen "The Tiger," by William Blake. This belongs to the class of literature constantly taken for use with children because it is reputed to be beautiful, yet which constantly fails in its appeal to a class. It is to me one of the most wonderful lyrics in the language, yet I doubt if it would ever have occurred to me to use it in our common schools, and certainly I should never have dreamed that it was to be presented to children in the lower grades. I do not know with what success teachers in general may have used it, but in one or two Boston schools with which I happen to be fairly well acquainted the effect is pretty justly represented by the mental attitude of the small lad spoken of in the next chapter. The extent to which children acquiesce in a sort of mechanical compliance in what to them are the vagaries of their elders in the matter of literature can hardly be exaggerated. Doubtless they often unconsciously gain much of which they do not dream in the way of the development of taste and perception, but too often the whole of the instruction given along æsthetic lines slides over them without producing any permanent effect of appreciable value.

Of course I do not contend that children are not advancing unless they know it. Early training in literature may often be of the highest value without definite consciousness on the part of the child. Self-analysis is no more to be expected here than anywhere else in the early stages of training. The child does not in the least comprehend, for instance, that the ditties of Mother Goose, meaningless jingles as they are, are educating his sense of rhythm; he does not understand that his imaginative powers are being nourished by the fairy-tale, the normal mental food for a certain stage of the development of the individual as it is the natural and inevitable product of a corresponding stage in the development of the race. So long as a child has genuine interest in a poem or a tale he is getting something from it, but he does not concern himself to consider anything beyond present enjoyment. In the earlier stages at least, and for that matter at any stage, the thing to be secured is interest; and instruction in the lower school grades should be confined to what is actually needed to make children enjoy a given piece. Anything beyond this may wisely be deferred.

In many of the lower grades it is now the fashion to have children act out poems. The method is spoken of with satisfaction by teachers who have tried it. I know nothing of it by experience, but should suppose it might be good if not carried too far. Children are naturally histrionic, and advantage may be taken of this fact to stimulate their imagination and to quicken their responsiveness to literature, if seriousness and sincerity are not forgotten.

In this early work it does not seem to me that much can wisely be done in the study of metrical effects. Indeed, I have serious doubts whether much in the way of the examination of the technique of poetry properly has place anywhere in preparatory schools. The child, however, should be trained gradually to notice metrical effects, by having attention called to passages which are especially musical or impressive. By beginning with ringing and strongly marked verse and leading on to effects more delicate the teacher may do much in this line.

I have called this early work "inspirational" because it should be directed to making literature a pleasure and an inspiration. The word, clumsy as it may seem, does express the real function of art, and the only function which may with any profit be considered in the earlier stages of the "study" of literature. The object is to make the children care for good books; to show them that poetry has a meaning for them; and to awaken in them—although they will be far from understanding the fact—a sensitiveness to ideals. The child will not be aware that he is being given higher views of life, that he is being trained to some perception of nobler aims and possibilities greater than are presented by common experiences; but this is what is really being accomplished. Any training which opens the eyes to the finer side of life is in the best and truest sense inspiration; and it should be the distinct aim of the teacher to see to it that whatever else may happen, in the lower grades or in the higher, this chief function of the teaching of literature shall not be lost sight of or neglected.

VIII

AN ILLUSTRATION

To attempt to give a concrete illustration of the method in which any teaching is to be carried on is in a way to try for the impossible. Every class and every pupil must be treated according to the especial nature of the case and the personal equation of the teacher. I perhaps expose myself to the danger of seeming egotistic if I insert here an experience of my own, and, what is of more consequence, I may possibly obscure the very points I am endeavoring to make clear. As well as I can, however, I shall set down an actual talk, in the hope that it may afford some hint of the way in which even difficult pieces of literature may be made to appeal to a child. Of course this is not in the least meant as a model, but solely and simply as an illustration.

I once asked a fine little fellow of eight what he was doing at school. He answered—because this happened to be the task which at the moment was most pressing—that he was committing to memory William Blake's "Tiger."

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"Oh, we don't have to like it," he responded with careless frankness, "we just have to learn it."

The form of his reply appealed to one's sense of humor, and I wondered how many of my own students in literature might have given answers not dissimilar in spirit, had they not outgrown the delicious candor which belongs to the first decade of a lad's life. The afternoon chanced to be rainy and at my disposal. I was curious to see what I could do with this combination of Blake and small boy, and I made the experiment. I should not have chosen the poem for one so young; but it is real, compact of noble imagination, the boy was evidently genuine, and a real poem must have something for any sincere reader even if he be a child.

The following report of our talk was not written down at the time, and makes no pretense of being literal. It does represent, so far as I can judge, with substantial accuracy what passed between the straightforward lad and myself. Too deliberate and too diffuse to have taken place in a school-room, it yet gives, on an extended scale, what I believe is the true method of "teaching literature" in all the secondary-school work. I do not claim to have originated or to have discovered the method; but I hope that I may be able to make clearer to some teachers how children may be helped to do their own thinking and thus brought to a vital and delighted enjoyment of the masterpieces they study.

I began to repeat aloud the opening lines of the poem.

"Why," said the boy, "do you know that? Did you have to learn it at school when you were little like me?"

"I'm not sure when I did learn it," I answered; "I've known it for a good while; but I didn't just learn it. I like it."

I repeated the whole poem, purposely refraining from giving it very great force, even in the supreme symphonic outburst of the magnificent fifth stanza:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand formed thy dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

"It sounds rather pretty," I commented, as carelessly as possible.

"Yes, I suppose so," he assented colorlessly, looking at me rather suspiciously.

He was a shrewd little mortal, and he had been so often told at school that he should like this and that for which in reality he did not care a button that he was on his guard. I made a casual remark about something entirely unrelated to the subject. It was well that the lad should not feel that he was being instructed. Then in a manner as natural and easy as I could make it I asked:

"Did you ever see a tiger?"

"Oh, yes; I've seen lots of them at the circus. Tom Bently never went to but one circus, but I've been to four."

"What does a tiger look like?" I went on, ignoring the irrelevant.

"He's a fierce-looking thing! Didn't you ever see one?"

"Yes, I've seen them, but I wondered if they looked the same to you as they do to me."

"Why, how do they look to you?"

"I asked you first. It's only fair for you to say first."

"Well," the small boy said, with a fine show of being determined to play fair, "I think they look like great big, big, big cats. Did you think that?"

"That's exactly what I should have said. They really are a sort of cat, you know. Did you ever see a keeper stir them up?"

"Oh, yes, sir; and they snarled like anything, and licked their lips just like this!"

He gave a highly gratifying imitation, and then added vivaciously: "If I were the keeper, I'd keep stirring them up all the time. They did look so mad!"

"And they opened and shut their eyes slowly," I suggested, "as if they'd like to get hold of their keeper."

"Yes; and their eyes were just like green fire."

"'Burning bright,'" I quoted; and then without giving the boy time to suspect that he was being led on, I asked at once: "Did you ever see a cat's eyes in the dark?"

"Oh, I saw our cat once last summer, when we were in the country, under a rosebush after dark, when Dick and I got out of the window after we'd gone to bed. She just scared me; her eyes were just like little green lanterns. Dick said they were like little bicycle lamps."

"If it had been a tiger under a bush in the night,—'in the forests of the night,'—"

"Oh," interrupted the boy with the eagerness of a discoverer, "is that what it means! Did he see a tiger in the night under a bush? A real, truly tiger, all loose? I'd have run away."

"I don't know if he ever saw one," I answered. "I rather think he saw a tiger or a picture of one, or thought of one, and then got to thinking how it must seem to come across one in the woods; when one was travelling, say, in the East where tigers live wild. If you came upon one in the forest in the dark, what do you think would be the first thing that would tell you a tiger was near?"

"I'd hear him."

"Did you ever hear a cat moving about?"

"No," the boy said doubtfully. "Aunt Katie says Spot doesn't make any more noise than a sunbeam. Could a sunbeam make a noise?"

"She meant that Spot didn't make any. You'd never hear a tiger coming, for it's a kind of cat, and moves without sound. You wouldn't know that way."

"I'd see him."

"In the night? You couldn't see him."

"Yes, I could! Yes, I could!" he cried triumphantly. "I'd see his eyes just like green fire."

I had interested the lad and taken him far enough to feel sure he would follow me if I helped him on a little faster. I was ready to use clear suggestion when I felt that he would respond to it as if the thought were his own.

"Well," I said, "don't you see that this is just what the man who wrote the poem meant? He got to thinking how the tiger would look in the night to anybody that came on him in the forest and saw those eyes like green fires shining at him out of the jungle. Don't you suppose you or I would think they were pretty big fires if we saw them, and knew there was a tiger behind them?"

"I guess we should! Wooh! Do you suppose Bruno'd run?"

Bruno was a small and silky water-spaniel, a charming beast in his way, but not especially welcome at this point of the conversation.

"Very likely;" I slid over the subject. "The man knew that he would have a feeling how big and strong that tiger must be: and it gave him a shock to think what a fearful thing the beast would be there in the dark, with all the warm, damp smells of the plants in the air, and the strange noises. It would almost take away his breath to think what a mighty Being it must have taken to make anything so awful as a tiger."

"Yes," the lad said so quietly that I let him think a little. He had snuggled up against my knee and laid hold of my fingers, and I knew some sense of the matter was working in him. After a moment or two I asked him if he could repeat the first verse of the poem as if he were the man who thought of the tiger in the jungle there, with fierce eyes shining out of the dark, and who had so clear an idea of the mighty creature that he couldn't help thinking what a wonderful thing it was that it could be created. The boy fixed his eyes on mine as if he were getting moved and half-consciously desired to be assured that I was utterly serious and sympathetic; and in his clear childish voice he repeated in a way that had really something of a thrill in it:

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

"If a traveller were in the jungle in the dark night," I went on after a word of praise for his recitation, "I suppose he couldn't see much around him, the trees would be so thick. He'd have to look up to the sky to see anything but the tiger's eyes."

"He'd see the stars there," the boy observed, just as I had hoped he would. "I've seen stars through the trees. I was out in the woods long after dark once."

"Were you really? The man must have thought the stars looked like the eyes, as if when the animal was made the Creator went to the sky itself for that fire. Think of a Being that could rise to the very stars and take their light in His hand."

"Ouf!" the small man cried naïvely. "I shouldn't want to take fire in my hand!"

"The writer of the poem was thinking what a wonderful Being He must be that could do it; but that if He could make a creature like the tiger, He would be able to do anything."

The boy reflected a moment, and then, with a frank look, asked: "Did the fire in a tiger's eyes really come out of the stars?"

"I don't think that the poem means that it really did," was my answer. "I think it means that when the poet thought how wonderful a tiger is, with the life and the fierceness shining like a flame in his eyes, and how we cannot tell where that fire came from, and that the stars overhead were scarcely brighter, it seemed as if that was where the green light came from. He was trying to say how wonderful and terrible it was to him,—especially when he thought of coming upon the beast all alone in the forest in the night with nobody near to defend him."

The boy was silent, and thinking hard. He had evidently not yet clearly grasped all the idea.

"But God didn't make a tiger on an anvil and put pieces of stars in for eyes," he objected.

"You told me yesterday that Bruno swims like a duck. He doesn't really, for a duck goes on the top of the water."

"Oh, but I meant that Bruno goes as fast as a duck."

"And you wanted me to know how well he swims, I suppose."

"Why, of course. Bruno can swim twice as fast as Tom Talcott's dog."

"You said that about the duck to make me know what a wonderful swimmer Bruno is, and the man who wrote the poem wanted you when you read it to feel how wonderful the tiger seemed to him; its eyes as if they were of fire brought from the stars, its strength so great that it seemed as if his muscles had been beaten out on an anvil from red-hot steel by some Being mighty enough to do something no man could begin to do. The poem doesn't mean that a tiger was really made in this way; but it does mean that when you think of the strength and fearfulness of the creature, able to carry off a man or even a horse in its jaws, this is the best way to give an idea of how terrible the animal seemed."

The boy accepted this, and so we came to the fifth verse. The range of ideas here is so much beyond the mind of any child that it was necessary to suggest most of them, to go very slowly, and in the end to be content with a childishly inadequate notion of the magnificent conception. I gave frankly a suggestion of the creation of all the animals at the beginning, and of how the angels might have stood around like stars, watching full of interest and of kindness. The boy was easily made to feel as if he had seen the making of the deer and the lamb and the horse, and of how the angels might see in one or another of the animals a help or a friend to man.

"Then suppose," I said, "that the angels should see God make the great tiger, royal and terrible. What would they see?"

"Oh, a great fierce thing," the lad returned. "Do you suppose he'd jump right at the deer and the lambs?"

"He would make the angels think how he could. How different from the other animals he'd be."

"Yes, he'd have big, big, sharp teeth, and he'd lash his tail, and he'd put out his claws. Do you suppose he'd sharpen his claws the way Muff does on the leather chairs?"

"Very likely he would," I said. "At any rate the angels would think how the other animals would be torn to pieces if the tiger got hold of them; and they would think of what would happen to men. Perhaps they would imagine some poor Hindu woman, with her baby on her back going through a path in the jungle, and how the tiger might leap out suddenly and tear them both to pieces. The angels couldn't understand how God could bear to make any animal so cruel, or how He could be willing to have anything so wicked in the world. They would be so sorry for all the suffering that was to come that they would throw down their spears and not be able to keep back the tears."

"But angels wouldn't have spears, would they?"

I went to a shelf of the library in which we were talking and took down a volume in which I found a picture of St. Michael in full armor.