The most serious fault with the text-book method is the barrenness arising from condensation. To teach history solely from a single book, even if this be among the best, is to produce an atrophy of the historical interest. It is on this account that successful teachers introduce large amounts of collateral reading, not of similarly condensed books, which would be like remedying the drouth with more dry weather, but of sections from fuller works on the same subject. In American history the pupil is directed to read selected portions of standard works like those of Fiske, Parkman, McMaster, Turner, Tyler, or earlier historians. In English history he is sent directly to such men as Gardiner, Green, Freeman, Traill, Ransome, Cunningham and McArthur, Harrison and Macaulay. The method of copious readings has, in turn, its disadvantages, the most conspicuous of which is diffusiveness. It is easy for the student to become so absorbed in a mass of details that he lose the proper sense of proportion, or overlook the relative importance of events, or fail to fix firmly in mind the causal series that binds all together. In the case of either of the methods described, it is the teacher who is responsible for order and for clearness of detail. In the one case his narrative must have the artistic unity of the finished historian; in the other he must so manage a wealth of given material that the golden chain of cause and effect shall be seen binding diversity into unity. The ability to do the first is of a much rarer order than that of the second, for the art of teaching is not so difficult as the art of historical composition. The remedy for the specific difficulty which modern text-book teaching of history encounters will be discussed under paragraph 247. The stories of Herodotus should serve the teacher as the basis for practice. In fact, they should actually be memorized in an accurate but fluent translation. The effect on children is surprising. At a later stage use may be made of Arrian and Livy. The method of the ancients of letting the principal characters utter their views and set forth their motives with their own lips, the narrator abstaining from reflections of his own, should be scrupulously imitated, and should be departed from only in the case of manifestly artificial rhetorical devices. 244. The course of preparation outlined above (240–243) having gone hand-in-hand with a thorough, pragmatic study of history, it is further necessary, in the exercise of the art acquired, to learn to expand or contract, according to circumstances and the specific aims of each occasion. Concerning this point no generally applicable rules can be given, on account of the great variety of possible cases; but the following suggestions should be noted:--