all the children will rejoice in _rye_--_pie_. But there will be some to whom _sing_--_song_--_sixpence_--_pocket_, _full_--_four_, _blackbirds_--_baked_, are so many delights, and there may be some to whom the wonderful chime of the vowels will make music. Anyone who knows children will have noticed the pleasure that the merest babies will take in beautiful or especially pat collocations of syllables. A child whom I knew, just beginning to talk, would say to himself many times a day, and always with a smile of amused pleasure, the phrases "apple-batter pudding," "picallilli pickles," "up into the cherry tree," "piping down the valleys wild." It is probably true that some of his apparent pleasure was that species of hysteria produced in most babies by any mild explosion, and the little fusillade of _p's_ in the examples he liked best would account for a part of his enjoyment. But we must think that there was pleasure there, and, whether it were physical or mental, it arose from the pleasing combination of verbal sounds. Most children have this ear for the music of words; and some attempt should be made to evoke it in those that have it not. This quality, then, is the first thing we ask of the verse we choose for the youngest children. The mere jingles, provided they are really musical, are useful to emphasize this side of verse, because, being free from content, they can give themselves entirely to sound. It is also most desirable that some of these earliest verses be set to music that the children can sing; that the class march to the rhythm of recited verses; that they be taught, if possible, to dance to some of them. Some such form of accompaniment of the verses, deepens the impression of the music, records in the child's consciousness an impression of the poem as an image of motion, and opens a channel for the expression of the mood produced in the children by the verses--a more acceptable channel of expression, certainly, for all the lyrics and for most of the narrative verses, than mere recitation, and a more artistic one than what we commonly know and dread as elocution. The teaching of verse gives a chance and an invitation to linger over and enjoy many fine and delicate aspects of the art that we are likely to miss in the story. Something in the nature of verse--the condensation, the careful arrangement, the chosen words--seems to call upon us to go slowly with it. It may be that we linger to apprehend one by one the details of an image or picture, like-- Daffy-down dilly has come up to town In a yellow petticoat and a green gown, The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising, There are forty feeding like one; In the pool drowse the cattle up to their knees, The crows fly over by twos and threes; some apt or beautiful phrase-- Snowy summits old in story;