so, in the reader's own reaction to what he has read. Do you agree with the claim? Would you modify or contradict it? Has the writer established it reasonably? Is his material capable of establishing it? It is with this return in mind that I have selected the extracts in this compilation. The passages had to have sufficient emotional content and clearness to make them worth reading aloud, and sufficient intellectual content to make them worth analyzing. At once, therefore, all purely descriptive material was discarded as not lending itself, however excellent emotionally, to analysis. Furthermore, the extracts should be susceptible of analysis without taxing the memory. This meant discarding all material proceeding by enumeration, whether of objects, items, or events. It is hoped that, when all my considerations are borne in mind, not many of the passages here will be found unworthy of inclusion and none of them of the name of literature. It is hoped also by the compiler that even those teachers of Elocution and of Oral English who are at present conducting their courses in the way he has in mind, will find in this book a larger and more varied body of material for their purpose than they can find elsewhere. PASSAGES FOR TRAINING HIS LITERARY AND PERSONAL JUDGMENT I have sought in all ways to select passages which, while offering the two qualities of emotional and intellectual content, were capable of training the literary and personal judgment of the reader. For the latter reason, I have culled from as wide a field of opinion as I could find at hand. For the former reason, I have included, though space is precious, many selections which, while coming up to a certain standard of merit, are not in their various kinds particularly admirable. For the same reason I have included many selec tions which would be better if edited. They are too long for their content, they admit extraneous matter, they develop side issues unduly. It is my custom to ask the reader to condense such selections before bringing them into class. With debatable editing, I assign the passages to two readers; and they and the class compare their editions. Then, in this particular, there are other selections which, though possessing unity, can tell all they have to say in less time. With these I ask the reader to omit all that he thinks unnecessary before he comes to class, and then challenge his excisions. The value of these two exercises in training the judgment is, I think, apparent; and is sufficient to justify the space which makes them possible. I have included also several lengthy poems of regular stanzas, because, being composed of uniform units, they afford convenient material for a lively and illuminating exercise which I may call a reading bee. The entire section takes the floor and I "spell them out" when they have falsified the meaning of the author. I have seldom had a class in which at the finish of Gray's Elegy or Omar, for instance, there was one surviving member. In arrangement of the selections, I have generally proceeded from the shorter to the longer, the first naturally presenting units more adapted to the formation of the habit of careful reading and the intensive analysis which secures it. For the rest, the arrangement contemplates only furnishing variety to a class period. As I finish the long but pleasant task of selection, I am struck anew with the substance, richness, and variety of the thought, imagination, and emotion here contained. It is in setting before the student such a collection as this, that the leading aim of college is secured-to acquaint young men and women with the achievements of mankind. As I look back upon my days of theme-writing in college and compare their poverty with these riches, I marvel at the mistake of educating a student in English by writing rather than by reading. When I read over the ponderous collection of my themes, gathering dust now these many years on an out of the way shelf, the impression is much reinforced. Why all this labor to produce nothing? "As though Pharaoh should set the children of Israel to make a pin instead of a pyramid," or, like Meredith's ocean, ramping with so thunderous a noise to make one thin line upon the shore! Although I was a student who thought himself of unusual literary appreciation and possessed certainly unusual desire for selfexpression, I am well-nigh appalled at their laborious vapidity, and, what is worse, at their insincerity-although I had even more than youth's usual share of the confidence of something to say. Not until, somewhat late in life, I came to teach-that is, not until I came to communicate precisely -did I realize how slipshod a reader I had been. This is how the students in a class in the Oral Study of Literature may test, for themselves and under supervision, the faultiness of their own habits of reading while their working lives are still before them. When I reflect how many years it was after I left college before I came to recognize the fact that I did not know how to read, I am tempted to indict an educational system which, in assuming that I already knew how, although it knew very well to the contrary, taught me Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Columbia University ALGERNON TASSIN October, 1922 THE ORAL STUDY OF LITERATURE 1. DEARLY BOUGHT UNDERSTANDING When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but vether it's worth while goin' through so much to learn so little, as the charity-boy said wen he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste. I rayther think it isn't. CHARLES DICKENS-Pickwick Papers 2. ACTS GO ON ACTING Our deeds are like children that are born to us: they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness. Fame is an undertaker, that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave. C. C. COLTON-Lacon 5. ARISTOCRACY INEVITABLE Amongst the masses-even in revolutions-aristocracy must ever exist. Destroy it in nobility, and it becomes centered in the rich and powerful House of the Commons. Pull them down, and it survives in the master and foreman of the workshop. F. P. G. GUIZOT 6. THERE IS A TIDE IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN THERE is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Is bound in shallows and in miseries. And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE Julius Caesar 7. GOD AND SOLDIERS OUR God and soldier we alike adore After deliv'rance both alike requited, Our God forgotten and our soldiers slighted. FRANCIS QUARLES 8. CASSIO'S REMORSE O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee Devil. O God, that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! WILLIAM SHAKSPERE-Othello 9. THE BIGOT Mr. T. sees religion not as a sphere but as a line, and it is the identical line in which he is moving. He is like an African buffalo -sees right forward, but nothing on the right hand or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels or of devils at the distance of ten yards on one side or the other. JOHN FORSTER-Journal 10. HE HAS OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT He has outsoared the shadow of our night; A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain. |