ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Selections from Owen Wister, Jacob Riis, and Hillis are used by permission of and special arrangement with the publishers, Macmillan Company.

Selections from Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Lucy Larcom, Emerson, and Mary Antin, are used by permission of and by special arrangement with Houghton, Mifflin & Company, the authorized publishers of their works.

"Hats Off, the Flag Goes By," by Henry Holcomb Bennett, is used by permission of the Youths' Companion.

Selections from "Home Folks," by James Whitcomb Riley, copyright 1900, are used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

"Triplefoot," from Mason A. Walton's "A Hermit's Wild Friends," is used by permission of the author, and the publishers, Dana Estes Company.

Selections from Helen Keller's "The Story of My Life," copyright 1902-1903, are used by permission of the author, and the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Company.

"The Unconscious Greatness of Stonewall Jackson," "Failed," "Two Glasses," and "The First Boston Thanksgiving," taken from "Pieces for Every Occasion," are used by permission of the publishers, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, New York.

"Flash," taken from "Shoemaker's Best Selections," by Will Carleton, is used by permission of the Penn Publishing Company, Philadelphia.

"The Constitution" is used by the permission of the author, Henry Cabot Lodge.

"South During the Revolution," by Hayne, taken from "Steps to Oratory," copyright 1900 by F. Townsend Southwick, used by permission of the American Book Company, publishers.

"The Football Game," by Ralph Connor, is used by permission of the publishers, Fleming H. Revell Company.

"The Bend of the Road," from "Anne of Green Gables," is used by permission of and arrangement with L. C. Paige & Co., publishers.

"The Message to Garcia," by Elbert Hubbard, is used by permission of the publishers, The Roycrofters.

"The Bishop of Cottontown," by John Trotwood Moore, copyright 1906, is used by permission of John C. Winston Company, publishers.

"The Liberty Bell," by E. S. Brooks, from "Heroic Happenings," and selections, by Myrtle Reid, are used by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, publishers.

"Strongheart" is used by permission of the publishers, G. W. Dillingham Co.

"Homes of the People" and "The New South" are by permission of E. D. Shurter and are taken from his “Orations and Speeches of Henry W. Grady."

Lee's "Farewell Address," from "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," is used by permission of D. Appleton & Co.

Selections from "Abroad Again," and "Sunrise to Sunset," by Curtis Guild (1827-1911), are used by permission of his son, Curtis Guild, ex-Governor of Massachusetts.

Simmons Reading Books

PREFACE

"There was a child went forth every day and the first object he looked upon, that object he became; and that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years." -WALT WHITMAN.

The above is sung by a Southern poet, but the teacher of to-day says:

"There was a child went forth every day and the Reading Book he looked within, that Reading Book he became and that Reading Book became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day or for many years, or stretching cycles of years."

Educators agree that one of the most important periods of life is that of adolescence. At that time is a child peculiarly susceptible to all influences. His activities, his recreations, his friends, his books cannot then be too carefully selected.

All Reading Books are important, but the Reading Book for this period is especially so.

The Eighth-Grade Reading Book is distinctively the one of adolescence.

At the age when this book is introduced into the school-life the mechanical part of reading has supposedly already been taught, and henceforth the specific work of the school Reading Book through the instructive, literary, and moral value of its selections should be to directly build character and to fix literary standards.

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Great men look back and tell us their first impulse to real patriotism came when at the age of thirteen or fourteen they read some stirring selection in an old school Reading Book.

Patrick Henry's speech and a Reading Book produced soldiers for three wars. Soldiers may always be produced in that way. William Cary at twelve read in school of Brainard's work among the North American Indians. Brainard's heroism plus the school Reading Book made of him the foremost missionary of his day.

Whittier's genius received impetus from the Reading Book of the Red School House, and Abraham Lincoln first believed in his own possibilities when one night, by the light of the burning logs he read in a school Reading Book of another poor boy, who in spite of poverty had succeeded in giving himself an education.

Many a child leaves his Eighth-Grade Reading Book to never again be under regular school instruction. Whether he will continue in life to read largely depends on the interest, value and scope of his last Reading Book.

To the child fortunate enough to continue in higher schools, his liking for, and therefore his success in, studying general literature will be influenced by the character of the last Reading Book he has used.

To give selections based on actual experiences of child-life of such high instructive, literary, and moral value, that the most desirable of all things would seem that they indeed should "become a part of him, for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years," is the object of this Eighth-Grade Reading Book.