_The Author._ When the study relates to a specific selection it is wise to create an interest by looking for all the contributory aids that can be found. Sometimes a knowledge of the life of the author or of the circumstances under which the selection was written will stimulate a desire to know what has been said and will moreover assist to make the meaning clear and to create the same sentiment that inspired the writer. To know that _Snow-Bound_ is a description of Whittier's own home, that the people about the fireside are his own parents, brothers, sisters, and that he paints them with a loving touch after all but the one brother have passed to the other side, is to make the poem appeal to our emotions with an intensity which the beautiful lines alone could not effect. _Ichabod_ we read once, but when we know the meaning of its spiritual name and remember that it is Whittier's indignant rebuke of Webster for his vacillating policy in the slavery agitation, we read it again with a renewed and more vivid interest. Many things, however, are so universal that one cares not whether they were written by a Hindoo or an American, whether they are full of personal experience or drawn with the fervor of the most ardent imagination. Wordsworth's _Daffodils_ (Volume VII, page 1) would charm us and our hearts would dance as joyfully if we knew nothing of the pensive poet of the English lakes. _Sentences._ Words alone are not a sufficient possession. They must be known in all their relations. A comprehension of the structure of the sentence is always necessary. A sentence is a unit of thought, an idea reduced to its lowest terms. It may not be necessary that each sentence be analyzed strictly by grammatical rules, but it is essential that the reader should recognize by study if necessary the subject and the predicate and the character and rank of all the modifiers of each. Even the practiced reader by unconsciously laying undue prominence upon some minor phrase frequently modifies the meaning an author intends to convey. This is particularly true in verse, where the poet, hemmed in by the rules that govern his meter and his rhyme, varies the natural order of the elements of a sentence to bring the accents where they belong or to throw the rhyming word to the end of a verse. The grouping of related sentences into paragraphs is an aid to the reader and should be noticed by him till the habit of expecting a slight change in thought with the indentation of a line becomes fixed and automatic.