6. It is not intended to limit the reading of the schools to the longer classics, such as "Snow-Bound," "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and Webster's Bunker Hill speech, etc. There are also many shorter poems and stories, ballads, and myths, that are equally good and stand out as strong, complete expressions of thought such as Tennyson's "Brook," Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," and many others. These shorter pieces should be interspersed among the longer, and freely used to give greater variety and zest to reading exercises. Many of the finest literary products of the language are found in these shorter poems and stories. They also should be studied for the beauty and unity of thought contained in each. 7. But the _sustained power_ gained from the full and rich study of longer classics is the best fruitage of the reading work. Every term of school should lead the children into the full appreciation of one or more of these masterly works. The value of such study is well expressed by Scudder in his "Literature in Schools" (pp. 54-56):-- "The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference of American authors to English, but in the careful concentration of the minds of boys and girls upon standard American literature, in opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance with scraps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In my paper on 'Nursery Classics in School,' I argued that there is a true economy in substituting the great books of that portion of the world's literature which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant bookmakers. There is an equally noble economy in engaging the child's mind, when it is passing out of an immature state into one of rational, intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen classic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty of vagrancy in reading; the public libraries and cheap papers are abundantly able to satisfy the truant: but it ought to be recognized once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreciation of literature, not to amuse it with idle diversion; to this end, the simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for their regular task in reading, not scraps from this and that author, duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely selected series of works by men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth living in.