THE MOTHER TONGUE BOOK I LESSONS IN SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING ENGLISH BY SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD SUPERVISOR OF SCHOOLS IN BOSTON AND GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS The Athenæum Press 1900 HARVARD COLLEGE 11 Kor 1725 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY S. L. ARNOLD AND G. L. KITTREDGE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE. Book I of "The Mother Tongue" is designed to guide children to an intelligent appreciation and enjoyment of good English, to help them to speak and write correctly, and to introduce them to the study of grammar. To appreciate the power and beauty of any language, a child must become familiar with well-written prose and verse in selections that shall be interesting from his own point of view as well as acceptable to the critical scholar. By familiar association with such writings, and wisely directed study of them, the child's taste is cultivated and a love of literature is fostered. With this in view, the book provides selections from good authors, in prose and verse, together with full instructions for their use in different ways. Exercises for reading, study, discussion, and learning by heart accompany the selections. A similar study of the material contained in the pupil's reading book will follow as a natural result, and thus these lessons form an introduction to the elementary study of literature. Two long selections ("Story of Gemila," "Hiawatha's Sailing") have been introduced and made the basis of typical exercises, to indicate the manner in which such prose iii |