FOREWORD OF REVISED EDITION Now, in 1922, a new edition of "Young People's Story of American Literature" is issued. What a wonderful broadening of vision since the beginning of our colonial period over three hundred years ago! To-day there is more thoughtful and artistic authorship than ever before. Essayist and dramatist, biographer and historian, scientist and philosopher, novelist and poet, are writing; the illustrator is busy with brush and camera-and everybody reads. The demand is great and our literature is worthy of consideration. Let us study its trend from the characteristics of a few representative authors, for it is better to be familiar with the work of a few rather than to have scant acquaintance with that of the many. Which are the best we may not know, for it is never possible to give correct perspective of contemporary writers. Keenest critics fail in judgment of their own age. Amy Lowell says: "To-day can never be adequately expressed largely because we are a part of it and only a part"; while John Jay Chapman thus voices his views: "A historian cannot get his mind into focus upon anything as near as the present." FOREWORD A STORY is not necessarily bound by historical perspective; and in the following "Young People's Story of American Literature," the aim has been three-fold: First, to bring into clear outline such biographical and dramatic elements as appeal to young people and stimulate them to seek further. Second, to incite the youth and maiden in committing to memory poetic selections. These faithfully garnered will prove a rich treasure. Third, to interest the student in visiting the shrines of our own land as eagerly as those abroad. In collecting materials for the book, the writer has been enabled through great courtesy to visit many of the places mentioned, and has noted much of local value in a desire to add colour to the story. Every shrine visited has made more vivid the personality associated with it. So the "Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly," are in brief: To seek companionship of the best books; to memorise choice poems; and to make pilgrimages to the homes of American authors. The writer acknowledges, with thanks, the permission given by Houghton, Mifflin and Company to reprint extracts from the works of Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Stedman, and others; by Charles Scribner's Sons to quote from the poems of Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Eugene Field, and Sidney Lanier; by Small, Maynard and Company to quote short extracts from the poems of Rev. John B. Tabb; by Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company to quote from the poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne; by D. Appleton and Company to quote from the poems of William Cullen Bryant; and by Little, Brown and Company to quote "Poppies in the Wheat," copyright 1892, by Roberts Brothers, and also some short quotations from other poems of Helen Hunt Jackson. |