Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed
Proofreaders
1893
The attentive reader of this little book will be apt to notice very soonthat though its title is Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading,the verse occupies nine tenths, the prose being confined to about twohundred proverbs and familiar sayings—some of them, indeed, inrhyme—scattered in groups throughout the book. The reason for this willbe apparent as soon as one considers the end in view in the preparationof this compilation.
The Riverside Primer and Reader, as stated in its Introduction, "isdesigned to serve as the sole text-book in reading required by a pupil.When he has mastered it he is ready to make the acquaintance of theworld's literature in the English tongue." In that book, therefore, thepupil was led by easy exercises to an intelligent reading of pieces ofliterature, both verse and prose, so that he might become in a slightdegree familiar with literature before he parted with his soletext-book. But the largest space had, of necessity, to be given topractice work, which led straight to literature, indeed, though to asmall quantity only. The verse offered in that book was drawn fromnursery rhymes and from a few of the great masters of poetical form; theprose was furnished by a selection of proverbs, some of the simplestfolk stories, and two passages, closing the book, from the Old and NewTestaments.
The pupil, upon laying down his Primer and Reader and proposing toenter the promised land of literature, could find a volume of proseconsisting of Fables and Folk Stories, into the pleasures of which hehad already been initiated; but until now he could find no volume ofpoetry especially prepared for him which should fulfill the promise ofthe verse offered to him in his Primer and Reader. Be it rememberedthat he was not so much to read verse written expressly for him, as tooverhear the great poets when they sang so simply, so directly, and yetwith so penetrating a note that the burden of their song, full, it maybe, to the child's elders, would have an awakening power for the childhimself. As so often said, a child can receive and delight in a poemthrough the ear long before he is able to attain the same pleasurethrough the eye; and there are many poems in such a book, for example,as Miss Agnes Repplier's A Book of Famous Verse, wholly delightful fora child to listen to which yet it would be impossible for him to read tohimself.
The agreeable task of the editor, therefore, was to search English andAmerican literature for those poems which had fallen from the lips ofpoets with so sweet a cadence and in such simple notes that they wouldoffer but slight difficulties to a child who had mastered the rudimentsof reading. It was by no means necessary that such poems should have hadan audience of children in mind nor have taken childhood for a subject,though it was natural that a few of the verses should prove to besuggested by some aspect of child-life. The selection must be its ownadvocate, but it may be worth while to point out that the plan of thebook supposes an easy approach to the more serious poems by means of thelight ditties of the nursery; that there is no more reason for deprivinga child of honest fun in his verse than there is for condemning thechild's elders to grave poetry exclusively; and that it is not nec