Practical Recitations

Selections for Literary Exercises
APPROPRIATE FOR
Reception-Days, Holidays, Poets’ Birthdays, etc.,
INCLUDING
CONCERT AND MUSICAL RECITATIONS, AND DIALOGUES
FROM POPULAR AUTHORS, ESPECIALLY
ARRANGED FOR THIS WORK.

BY
Caroline B. LeRow,
Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly
Instructor in Vassar and Smith Colleges.

NEW YORK:
Clark & Maynard, Publishers,
771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth Street.

A Practical Reader.

WITH
EXERCISES IN VOCAL CULTURE.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW,

Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly at Smith and Vassar Colleges.

All students are expected to be able to read well ordinary prose and poetry, and it is for the purpose of helping them to do this, as well as to help teachers in the teaching of reading, that this book is prepared.

It is thoroughly practical. No unnecessary technical terms are used. The subjects explained and illustrated are those only which, as the result of many years’ experience among teachers as well as pupils, the compiler has found most necessary.

As physical development and correct vocalization must precede all good reading, the simplest and therefore most essential physical and vocal exercises are given, with full directions for their use.

The selections for reading present nothing of a merely showy style of elocution. They are adapted for the upper classes of Grammar Schools, as well as for High and advanced schools.

We claim that the Practical Reader contains more suitable material for elocutionary work in the school-room, in more condensed, analytical, and available form, than any other Reader or Speaker before the public.

224 Pages, 16mo, Handsome Cloth Binding, Red Edges.

A Specimen Copy for Examination, or Copies for Introduction, will be Delivered at 60 Cents Each.

How to Teach Reading.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Failure in the Teaching of Reading—Teaching by Imitation—Natural and Logical Method—Variety in Teaching—Physical Exercise—Value of Exercise—Directions for Using Exercises—Exercises for the Body—Exercises for the Chest—Cautions in the Use of Physical Exercises—Breathing—Breathing Exercises—Cautions in the Use of Breathing Exercises—Whispering—Articulation—Vowel Sounds—Consonant Sounds—Final Consonants—Physical Effort in Articulation—Impediments of Speech—Blundering Articulation—Manner of Practicing Exercises in Articulation—Spelling Words by Sounds—Naturalness in Reading—Place of Emphasis—Selection of Words—Teaching without a Book—Punctuation—Sense Independent of Punctuation—The Reading of Poetry—Concert Reading—Reading and Singing—Vocal Accuracy in Recitations—Breathlessness in Reading—Timidity in Reading—Work in Advanced Classes—Special Faults—Extract from “Reading as a Fine Art.”

32 Pages. Price Postpaid, 12 Cents per Copy.

CLARK & MAYNARD, Publishers,
771 Broadway, New York.

Copyright, 1886, by Clark & Maynard.

PREFACE.

Recitations form one of the most attractive features of school entertainments, and give a pleasant variety to every-day work; yet few teachers have the time, even if they have the ability, to drill pupils in the long and difficult pieces which form the bulk of the countless Recitations offered to the public.

The selections included in this volume are in harmony with the spirit of class-room work, which demands brevity, simplicity, good sense, and sound morality. This is the only compilation of the kind in which these matters are considered as of equal importance with elocutionary effect. Very few of the pieces are to be found in any other book, and each one has been practically tested in the school-room. The style of rendering, wherever specified, can be changed, of course, to suit the taste of the teacher.

As it is desirable that the largest possible number of students should share in such exercises, many short selections, excellent for practice in correct emphasis and distinct articulation, are provided for the purpose.

The observance of our poets’ birthdays is becoming a pleasant and profitable custom in most schools, and provision has been made for these anniversaries as well as for all other holidays.

As it is not possible to make liberal provision for each poet, it is hoped that the Alphabets will be suggestive of their best poems, and the prose extracts concerning the writers will inspire in students a desire to become better acquainted with them and their works.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF AUTHORS.

• Alcott, Louisa M., [251]
• Arnold, Edwin, [30]
• Barr, Mary A., [62]
• Bartlett, David W., [153]
• Bartol, Rev. C. A., [125]
• Bates, Katharine Lee, [207]
• Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, [100]
• Bellows, Rev. Henry W., [116]
• Bigelow, John, [115]
• Blackmore, R. D., [240]
• Bland, T. A., [238]
• Boyd, Rev. A. K. H., [13]
• Bradley, Mary E., [82], [217]
• Bright, John, [163]
• Bryant, William Cullen, [78], [121], [122], [123], [212]
• Bunyan, John, [245]
• Burnham, Anna F., [25]
• Butterworth, Hezekiah, [182], [192]
• Butts, Mary Frances, [29]
• Carleton, Will, [22]
• Cary, Alice, [213]
• Charles, E., [95]
• Coleridge, Hartley, [214]
• Collyer, Rev. Robert, [51]
• Cooke, George Willis, [125]
• Coolidge, Susan, [24], [64]
• Craik, Dinah Mulock, [199], [203], [233]
• Curtis, George Wm., [116], [134], [143]
• Cutler, J. S., [76]
• Dewey, Rev. Orville, [28]
• Dixey, Wolstan, [111]
• Dodge, Mary E., [223]
• Dumas, Alexander, [225]
• Eliot, Charles W., [133]
• Eliot, George, [229]
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, [129], [130], [131]
• Farningham, Marianne, [12], [15]
• Fern, Fanny, [237]
• Fields, James T., [155]
• Frothingham, Rev. O. B., [143]
• Garfield, James A., [74]
• Gates, Ellen M. H., [21]
• Gellert, Christian, [67]
• Goodale, Dora, [49]
• Goodale, Elaine, [34]
• Halleck, Fitz-Greene, [115]
• Handy, M. P., [68]
• Haweis, Rev. H. R., [153]
• Hemans, Felicia, [78]
• Herrick, Robert, [184], [222]
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, [125], [139], [140], [141], [151]
• Hopkins, Louisa Parsons, [200], [215]
• Howells, William D., [185]
• Hugo, Victor, [254]
• Jackson, Helen Hunt, [79]
• Jewett, Ella, [44]
• Jones, Rosaline E., [216]
• Kennedy, Wm. Sloane, [134]
• Kimball, Harriet McEwen, [173]
• Kingsley, Charles, [247]
• Kinney, Elizabeth C., [124]
• Larcom, Lucy, [210]
• Lawrence, Kate, [77]
• LeRow, C. B., [92]
• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, [148], [149], [150], [171], [201]
• Lowell, James Russell, [91], [157], [159], [160], [161]
• Lytton, E. Bulwer, [235]
• Mabie, Hamilton W., [60]
• Mace, Frances L., [108]
• Mackay, Charles, [188]
• Mann, Horace, [39]
• Miller, Emily H., [42]
• Miller, Joaquin, [74]
• Moore, Ella Maud, [113]
• Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder, [126]
• Müller, Wilhelm, [87]
• Orne, C. F., [18]
• Palmer, Rev. Ray, [133]
• Peeke, Maggie B., [55], [59]
• Perry, Carlotta, [50]
• Phelps, Eliz. Stuart, [195]
• Pollard, Josephine, [14], [48]
• Preston, Margaret J., [40]
• Randall, Wm. H., [175]
• Reade, Charles, [243]
• Rexford, Eben E., [57]
• Sangster, Margaret E., [186], [203]
• Sargent, Epes, [227]
• Sargent, Helen Lee, [26]
• Savage, Rev. Minot J., [144], [197]
• Scott, Walter, [90], [189]
• Scranton, Bertha S., [190]
• Scudder, Horace E., [124], [162]
• Shepherd, Nathan G., [72]
• Shurtleff, Ernest W., [35]
• Sidney, Margaret, [176]
• Smith, May Riley, [202]
• Smith, Rev. Sydney, [17]
• Smuller, E. A., [187]
• Southey, Robert, [105], [214]
• Spofford, Harriet Prescott, [172]
• Stedman, Edmund C., [107]
• Stoddard, Richard H., [143], [162]
• Story, William W., [66], [142]
• Taylor, Bayard, [54]
• Tennyson, Alfred, [208]
• Thaxter, Celia, [110], [175], [206]
• Thompson, Phillips, [27]
• Thorne, Meta E. B., [85]
• Underwood, Frances H., [133], [152], [161]
• Veley, Margaret, [205]
• Washington, George, [71], [181]
• Wasson, Rev. David A., [162]
• Wetherell, Elizabeth, [231]
• Whipple, Edwin P., [116]
• Whittier, John Greenleaf, [132], [142], [167], [168], [170], [185], [221]
• Whitney, Adeline D. T., [32]
• Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, [35]
• Willis, Nathaniel P., [208]
• Winslow, Helen M., [109]
• Wordsworth, Wm., [41], [212]

Practical Recitations.

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

After Vacation.

Again they muster from the far-off hillside,

From country farm-house and from sea-girt shore;

Their tramping feet resound along the highways,

Their gleeful shouts ring on the air once more.

A merry band, so full of youth’s elixir,

How can their restless spirits e’er essay

The tasks that wait their patient, steady labor

After the long, bright, summer holiday?

Not now, O children, in the sunny meadows

Ye cull the flowers or by the brooklets stray,

But in the fields of knowledge, thick with blossoms,

To gather sweets for a far future day.

Here, too, you roam a land of fairest promise,

Watered by many a stream of limpid hue,

Where weary travelers find a sweet refreshment

And garner richest stores of old and new.

We bid thee welcome to the homes that missed thee,

To the deserted school-room’s open door.

The nation’s hope is in thee, keep thy birthright;

Thine heritage is more than golden store.

The Kingdom of Home.

The People’s Holidays.

Marianne Farningham.

Not alone for the rich and great

Are the beautiful works of God;

The mountain’s slopes and the ocean’s beach

By the people’s feet are trod,

And the poor man’s children sing and dance

On the green flower-covered sod.

Not alone for the cultured eyes

Do the sweet flowers spring and grow;

There is scarcely living a man so poor

But he may their sweetness know;

And out of the town to the fresh fair fields

The toilers all can go.

Away from the factory shop and desk,

Where the diligent work in throngs,

They go sometimes to the well-earned rest

That to faithful zeal belongs;

And the shore and the forest welcome them,

And the larks pour down their songs.

“Man does not live by bread alone,”

And well it needs must be

That we all should look on our Father’s works

By the river and lake and sea,

And spend our souls in adoring praise,

For He careth for you and me.

And well may all with a stronger hand,

And a braver, truer heart,

Go back to the task that God has given,

And faithfully do our part;

And bear in our souls the peace of the fields,

To the counter, the desk, and the mart.

Home Lights.

The light of June that shines on tremulous leaves

Of softest green, how fair a thing to see!

When shafts of dawn touch birch and maple tree,

Or sunset’s hour a mesh of magic weaves;

The diamond light that flashes on the sea

In August noons,—a dazzle of pure rays.

With lovely ground of blue, whereon we gaze

From cliff or sandy shore in ecstasy;

The light that blazes on the mountain way,

Or, strained to pallor, steals to lonely dells;

None are forgotten on this autumn day,

As with sweet memories the glad heart swells;

But as the October sun drops down the west,

We say with smiling lips, Home lights are best.

Concerning Beginnings and Ends.

Rev. A. K. H. Boyd.

We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop and start again in everything. The journey that crushes us down when we contemplate it as one long weary thing can be borne when we divide it into stages. And one great lesson of practical wisdom is to train ourselves to mentally divide everything into stages. It would crush down any man’s resolution if he saw in one glance the whole enormous bulk of labor which he will get through in a lifetime. And yet you know, and the little child knows just as well, that after he has conquered that tremendous alphabet, he must begin again with something else, he must mount from his first little book onwards and upwards into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step by step.

A Strange Experience.

Josephine Pollard.

They took the little London girl from out the city street

To where the grass was growing green, the birds were singing sweet;

And everything along the road so filled her with surprise,

The look of wonder fixed itself within her violet eyes.

The breezes ran to welcome her; they kissed her on each cheek,

And tried in every way they could their ecstasy to speak,

Inviting her to romp with them, and tumbling up her curls,

Expecting she would laugh or scold, like other little girls.

But she did not; no, she could not; for this crippled little child

Had lived within a dingy court where sunshine never smiled,

And for weary, weary days and months the little one had lain

Confined within a narrow room, and on a couch of pain.

The out-door world was strange to her—the broad expanse of sky,

The soft, green grass, the pretty flowers, the stream that trickled by;

But all at once she saw a sight that made her hold her breath,

And shake and tremble as if she were frightened near to death.

Oh, like some horrid monster of which the child had dreamed,

With nodding head and waving arms, the angry creature seemed;

It threatened her, it mocked at her, with gestures and grimace

That made her shrink with terror from its serpent-like embrace.

They kissed the trembling little one, they held her in their arms,

And tried in every way they could to quiet her alarms,

And said, “Oh, what a foolish little goose you are to be

So nervous and so terrified at nothing but a tree!”

They made her go up close to it, and put her arms around

The trunk and see how firmly it was fastened in the ground;

They told her all about the roots that clung down deeper yet,

And spoke of other curious things she never would forget.

Oh, I have heard of many, very many girls and boys

Who have to do without the sight of pretty books and toys,

Who have never seen the ocean; but the saddest thought to me

Is that anywhere there lives a child who never saw a tree.

The Daily Task.

Marianne Farningham.

The morning light falls gently on the eyes

And wakes the sleeping men;

And bids them rise and haste to meet the day,

And find their work again.

No one is asked to choose what he will do,

Or take the task loved best,

For God allots the places, and each one

Obeys His high behest.

One, loving silence, passes to the street

And mingles with the crowd,

And finds his daily work awaiting him,

Where noise is long and loud.

And one who hungers for the voice and touch

Of others in the gloom

Is ordered to withdraw from all, and work

Alone within one room.

Another, loving beauty, air, and light,

Passes in sordid ways,

And uncongenial sights, and jarring sounds,

The hours of his best days.

And yet another who could love all work,

And do it thankfully,

Has naught to do but suffer and be still

In patience, perfectly.

Are, then, the workers at their daily tasks

Unhappy and unblest?

Nay; He who chooses for them gives the wage

Of happiness and rest.

The feet pass swiftly to the place of toil,

The lips break into song,

And ready hands receive the allotted task,

Nor find the hours too long.

Because the loyal heart is true to God,

And the deft hand obeys

The Master, who decides what each shall do,

Joy fills the working days.

And so, if but the soul be leal, the task

Itself becomes more dear,

And every worker finds that work well done

Is work that brings good cheer.

“What’s the Lesson for To-day?”

Little Bess, with laughing eyes,

Brightly blue as summer skies,

Came to me one morn in May,

Asking in her eager way,

“What’s the lesson for to-day?”

And I told her, then and there,

What I wished her to prepare.

But new meaning (strange to say),

In the childish query lay,

“What’s the lesson for to-day?”

And I pondered o’er and o’er

What I scarce had thought before,—

As I went my wonted way,

Towards my duty, sad or gay,

“What’s my lesson for the day?”

Students in the school of life,

’Mid its struggles and its strife,

Let us ask, in childlike way,

Of the Teacher we obey,

“What’s the lesson for to-day?”

And the answer God will give,

He will show us how to live,

Teach us of His perfect way,

Grant us wisdom that we may

Learn the lesson of the day.

Moral Courage.

Rev. Sydney Smith.

A great deal of talent is lost in the world for the want of a little courage. The fact is, that to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating tasks, and adjusting nice chances; it did very well before the flood, where a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for an hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its success afterwards: but at present, a man waits and doubts and hesitates, and consults his brother and his uncle and particular friends, till one fine day he finds that he is sixty years of age; that he has lost so much time in consulting his first cousin and particular friends, that he has no more time to follow their advice.

No Work the Hardest Work.

Charles F. Orne.

Ho! ye who at the anvil toil,

And strike the sounding blow,

Where from the burning iron’s breast

The sparks fly to and fro,

While answering to the hammer’s ring,

And fire’s intenser glow—

Oh, while ye feel ’tis hard to toil

And sweat the long day through,

Remember it is harder still

To have no work to do.

Ho! ye who till the stubborn soil,

Whose hard hands guide the plow;

Who bend beneath the summer sun

With burning cheek and brow—

Ye deem the curse still clings to earth

From olden time till now;

But while ye feel ’tis hard to toil

And labor all day through,

Remember it is harder still

To have no work to do.

Ho! ye who plow the sea’s blue field,

Who ride the restless wave;

Beneath whose gallant vessel’s keel

There lies a yawning grave;

Around whose bark the wintry winds

Like fiends of fury rave—

Oh, while ye feel ’tis hard to toil

And labor long hours through,

Remember it is harder still

To have no work to do.

Ho! all who labor, all who strive,

Ye wield a mighty power;

Do with your might, do with your strength,

Fill every golden hour;

The glorious privilege to do

Is man’s most noble dower.

Oh, to your birthright and yourselves,

To your own souls be true!

A weary, wretched life is theirs

Who have no work to do.

Some Old School-books.

I have been back to my home again,

To the place where I was born;

I have heard the wind from the stormy main

Go rustling through the corn;

I have seen the purple hills once more;

I have stood on the rocky coast

Where the waves storm inland to the shore;

But the thing that touched me most

Was a little leather strap that kept

Some school-books, tattered and torn!

I sighed, I smiled, I could have wept

When I came on them one morn;

For I thought of the merry little lad,

In the mornings sweet and cool,

If weather was good, or weather bad,

Going whistling off to school.

My fingers undid the strap again,

And I thought how my hand had changed,

And half in longing, and half in pain,

Backward my memory ranged.

There was the grammar I knew so well,—

I didn’t remember a rule;

And the old blue speller,—I used to spell

Better than any in school;

And the wonderful geography