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Fal. Awây, you stârveling, you êel-skin, you dried néat's-tongue, you stôck-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor's yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck

SHAKESPEARE.

HINTS ABOUT ADDITIONAL SELECTIONS.

Dialogues, dialect pieces, and humorous selections are useful in school for the purpose of breaking up the tendency to stiffness, formality, and monotony in reading. There are times when the ripple of laughter is music in the school-room, and when the sunlight of humor is needed to dispel the mists of a gloomy day. There seems to be no good reason why the flashes of wit and humor that delight a whole nation should be altogether shut out from the school-room, because they do not form a part of "classic literature." Though such humorous and dialect selections might not seem appropriate for a drill-book like this volume, the wise and cheerful teacher will make good use of them, taking care, of course, to exclude objectionable selections. Teachers will do well to bear in mind that the taste of boys and girls from fourteen to eighteen years of age is not so critical as that of men and women of middle age.

These extracts should be read at sight, the book being passed from hand to hand, and one book serving for the whole class.

Many excellent selections can be found in such books as Lowell's "Biglow Papers," Dickens's "Pickwick Papers," Bret Harte's "Poems," Saxe's "Poems," Hood's "Poems," Mark Twain's books, Monroe's "Humorous Readings," Garrett's "Speaker's Garland," Shoemaker's "Elocutionist's Annual," and many other books of "Selections."

PART III.

PART III.

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

SECTION I.

PROSE SELECTIONS.

1. ELOCUTIONARY TRAINING.

1. Elocutionary training should be begun in early life, because then the vocal organs are flexible. It is a serious defect in our school methods of instruction, that the expressive faculties, comprising feeling, affection, emotion, passion, imagination, fancy, association, imitation, and description, are called so little into action. Elocution, when properly taught, calls into active exercise the expressive faculties, and tends to educate the child as a social being.

2. In most ungraded schools in the country, and in many city schools, an hour of the closing afternoon of each week may be usefully devoted to declamation, dialogue, and select readings. It is not advisable to compel every child in school to take part in these exercises, for there are some who never can become good readers, and others who are so awkward and diffident that it is cruel to force them upon the school stage with a declamation.

3. Appropriate selections should at first be made by

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the teacher; for the uncultivated taste of pupils will lead them to choose pieces altogether too difficult, or utterly worthless when committed to memory. Select at times, for the boys, short prose declamations, which, when learned, remain in the memory as models of pure prose and patriotic feeling. If they learn a poem, let it not be one made up of doggerel rhymes, or of painful attempts at a low order of wit.

4. A careful selection of pieces will be the surest safeguard against the ranting, tearing, overstrained, theatrical style of florid oratory which so painfully mars many school exhibitions. The teacher can take odd moments at the intermission, or recess, or before and after school, for the purpose of hearing rehearsals, and giving special instructions.

5. Teachers should instruct pupils in the elements of gesture. Gestures spring naturally from the close sympathy of mind and body. A look of the eye, au expression of the countenance, a movement of the hand, often convey more than words can express. The principles of gesture may be easily learned from any one of several excellent works on elocution.

6. The reading and recitation of poetry by girls is an indispensable part of the education of woman, as one of the most efficient modes of discipline for the taste and imagination. Many of the most exquisite passages of the poets can never be fully appreciated until repeated by the voice of woman.

7. It requires no close observer to perceive the effects of poetry on the youthful mind. Childhood delights in the melody of verse, and is pleased with its flowing harmony of sound. In poetry are embodied some of the most beautiful lessons of morality; and they are presented in a manner which arrests the attention and impresses the character. What teacher has not seen the dull eye kindle, the vacant countenance take expression,

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