The Law, the accepted moral standard of civilized nations; literally, the Hebrew law as set forth in the Old Testament. What relation does the thought of lines 3 and 4 bear to that of lines 1 and 2 ? Study the punctuation carefully. Take note of the inverted order of the stanza. Lord God of Hosts, be Does the significance of the refrain seem plainer and stronger in some stanzas than in others? STANZA 5. Line 3. What is the first dust referred to? (See Genesis 3: 19.) The second ? Of what use are lines 3 stanza? and 4 to the thought of the Explain heathen heart; reeking tube; iron shard; putting trust in reeking tube and iron shard; valiant dust; building on dust; guarding and calling not Thee to guard; frantic boast; foolish word. Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord. For what things? Why the word Lord instead of God? Heathen, originally, one who dwelt on the heath or in the woods. Its religious significance grew out of the fact that culture and civilization came first to the cities. Tube, gun. Shard, sword. Amen, a Hebrew word meaning So be it. Explain the peculiar fitness of the title. Why do you think it is classed as a great poem? Express briefly the underlying sentiment of the poem. Why do you think it has been so widely set to music, and why placed in the Hymnals of so many churches? Reread, applying your understanding of Repeated Words: I. Nos. 5, 6, 13, 23. Chap. Chap. III. Nos. 5, 6, 26, 34, 43. Chap. IV. Chap. V. Nos. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 27 (stanza 3). Chap. VI. Nos. 30, 36, 39, 49, 51. Chap. X. No. 17. Chap. XI. (PART I) Nos. 6, 12, 22. (PART II) Nos. 5, 12, 18, 20, 21. Chap. XII. Nos. 2, 6, 16. Chap. XIII. Nos. 1, 2, 8, 9, 13, 17, 21, 22. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR Review 1. Why does the author use repetition in No. I? No. 2 No. 3? No. 8? No. 9? 2. Quote three illustrations of emotional repetition. 3. What effect is gained by repetition in Nos. 19 and 21? 4. What is the effect of the repetition in line I of No. 22? 5. What three different reasons for repetition find illustration in No. 24? 6. (No. 25.) Who was Hiawatha? Gitche Manito? Where did Longfellow find the quaint trick of repetition? 7. Where do we look for the key to the manner of reading refrains? 8. (No. 30.) Explain the meaning of line 3; line 4. Define demagogue (line 7). 9. (No. 31.) Give the meaning of Recessional, dune, Gentiles, Amen. How does the word Lord differ in meaning from God? 10. (No. 31.) Explain the meaning of line 2, stanza 1; lines 1 and 2, stanza 2; line 1, stanza 3. CHAPTER XV CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION "Think, when you talk of horses, Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth." At the very beginning of the work (Chapter I), attention was called to the importance of noting the value of individual words, and this importance has ever been in mind, though added problems of expression have been continuously presented. At the very outset of this new chapter the same instruction is needed, for in the study of selections that appeal to the imagination a reader must train himself to catch not only the full significance of sentences, but the significance of individual words. Hence the opening exercises are such as will call attention to the expressive and suggestive power that may lie in single words and short phrases. Number I presents a series of shifting pictures embodied in single words; No. 2, in modified words; No. 3, in a variety of short phrases; and No. 4, in short clauses. As examples of some of the lines along which the imagination will be appealed to, No. 5 suggests practice in seeing people as they are described; 7 and 8, places; 9 and 10, actions; 18 and 20, sounds. In Nos. 11 and 12, we have emphasized the element TURNER, TEACH. TO READ 26 393 of time, and in 13 we see how directly figurative language appeals to the imagination. Many other qualities and combinations will be found in the selections given. Our ability to express the thought for others will depend upon our ability to "see" it for ourselves. What we see with the imagination, like what we see with the eyes, will depend very much on how carefully we look, and how long we look, and how much we know about the thing we are looking at. Personal appreciation lends to expression for others subtle qualities that mere obedience to rules can never engender; and as to benefit to ourselves, no time that we can spend in any other division of reading work will so richly repay us, or so continuously and broadly influence our student life, as the time we spend in training the inner eye. PEDAGOGICAL INTRODUCTION It will be noticed that studies in time, pitch, rate,\ force, volume, intensity, etc., as such, are not found among the chapter titles of this book. Such qualities. are outward manifestations of inward states. If a pupil gets the thought and holds it long enough to allow both the expressed and the suggested ideas to take conscious form, the picture to rise before his eyes, the emotion to fill his soul, outward manifestations will regulate themselves, while rules will only burden the mind, invite self-consciousness, and detract attention from the thought. To classify exercises as fast, medium, slow; high, medium, low; loud, medium, soft, etc., is, at the very outset, to do too much of the pupils' thinking for them. It is to relieve them of too much of the necessity of traveling for themselves the path of sympathetic imaginative experience, through which alone the subtle qualities of truthful expression can be coaxed from the untrained reader. Intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of the thought is ever the foundation upon which good reading must be built. Why do we talk better than we read? Because we know what we are going to say, we understand it, we see clearly the argument to be followed, the picture to be described. When such conditions are lacking, we do not talk well; we hesitate; we stammer; we repeat; we grope for words, and our sentences trail off into imperfection or incompleteness. Why do we read less well than we talk? Because reading is more difficult, and we do not have proportionately more practice. It is more difficult in that a double process is always involved: the simultaneous gleaning and giving of the thought. A double process is also involved in the gleaning of the thought; namely, the grasping of the printed words and the assimilation of the ideas for which they separately or combinedly stand. Pupils assimilate unemotional, unimaginative statements more readily than emotional, imaginative ones. Why? Because they have had more training along those lines. Every branch in the curriculum that is studied through a textbook gives practice in the assimilation of facts. We are apt to forget this difference when we call out the reading class, and to expect V |