quality does not appear it is because the child has no feeling, or the
wrong feeling, generally the former. There is but one way to correct the
expression, i. e., by stimulating the imagination."

"IV. FORCE. Force manifests the degree of mental energy. When we speak in a
loud voice, there is much energy; when softly, there is little. Do not tell
the child to read louder. If you do, you will get loudness--that awful
grating schoolboy loudness--without a particle of expression in it. Many a
child reads well, but is bashful. When we tell him to read louder, he
braces himself for the effort and kills the quality, which is the finer
breath and spirit of oral expression, and gives us a purely physical
thing--force. Put your weak-voiced readers on the platform; let them face
the class and talk to you, seated in the middle of the room, and you will
get all the force you need. On the whole, we have too much force, rather
than too little. Let the teacher learn that we want quality, not quantity,
and our statement of the mental action behind force will be of much benefit
in creating the proper conditions."

To discriminating teachers it will be apparent that this book is not the
usual school reader. On the contrary it differs widely from this in the
cultural value of the selections, in the classification and arrangement of
material, in the variety of interest to which it appeals, and in the
abundance of classic literature from American authors which it contains. It
aims to furnish the best in poetry and prose to be found in the literature
of the English-speaking race and to furnish it in abundance. If these
familiar old selections, long accepted as among the best in literature,
shall be the means of cultivating in pupils a taste for good reading, the
book will have fulfilled its purpose.

For permission to use valuable selections from their lists, acknowledgment