But not only should the teacher take an intelligent interest in contemporary authors who have already won a wide reputation, he should be eternally watchful, eternally hopeful--ready to detect signs of promise in the first books of writers whose names are wholly unknown. This does not mean that he should exaggerate the merits of every fresh work, nor beslobber with praise every ambitious quill-driver. On the contrary,--if there be occasion to give an opinion at all,--he should not hesitate to condemn what seems to him shallow, trivial, or counterfeit, no matter how big a "seller" the object in his vision may be. But his sympathies should be warm and keen, and his mind always responsive, when a new planet swims into his ken. One of the most joyful experiences of my life came to me some years ago when I read _Bob, Son of Battle_ with the unknown name Alfred Ollivant on the title-page. It was worth wading through tons of trash to find such a jewel. And is the literature of our generation really slight and mean? By "Contemporary Literature" we include perhaps authors who have written or who are writing during the lifetime of those who are now, let us say, thirty years old. Contemporary literature would then embrace, in the drama, Ibsen, Björnson, Victor Hugo, Henri Becque, Rostand, Maeterlinck, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Pinero, Jones, and others; in the novel, Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Björnson, Hugo, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, Heyse, Sudermann, Hardy, Meredith, Stevenson, Kipling, Howells, Mark Twain, and many others; in poetry, to speak of English writers alone, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, Morris, Kipling, Phillips, Watson, Thompson, and others. Those who live one hundred years from now will know more about the permanent value of the works of these men than we do; but are these names really of no importance to teachers whose speciality is literature? APPENDIX C TWO POEMS It is interesting to compare the two following poems, written by two distinguished English novelists, both men of fine intelligence, noble character, and absolute sincerity. Mr. Hardy's poem appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_, for 1 January, 1907. NEW YEAR'S EVE BY THOMAS HARDY "I have finished another year," said God, "In grey, green, white, and brown; I have strewn the leaf upon the sod, Sealed up the worm within the clod, And let the last sun down." "And what's the good of it?" I said, "What reasons made You call From formless void this earth I tread, When nine-and-ninety can be read Why nought should be at all? "Yea, Sire; why shaped You us, 'who in This tabernacle groan'?-- If ever a joy be found herein, Such joy no man had wished to win If he had never known!" Then He: "My labours logicless You may explain; not I: Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess That I evolved a Consciousness To ask for reasons why!